The Wizard of Harrenhal
by DisobedienceWriter
Summary: The Master of Death, Harry Potter, wakes one cold spring morning in Westeros. He has no idea why he's there - or how he'll get back. Harry always had bad luck, but a lot of persistence. He'll need it. Winter is Coming.
1. Chapter 1

**The Wizard of Harrenhal**

A/N: I re-read Book 1 and caught some of the HBO series (along with the far too-few fanfictions in progress), so I got inspired to try my hand at another story. This Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire story is a cross with the Harry Potter universe, which is much harder than it sounds to pull off.

XX

The young-looking man opened his eyes and discovered that he was on his back staring up at the sky. He looked all around and saw that he was sprawled on the bank of a minor stream, not even a river.

"What happened now?" he asked no one. With his luck, the answer could be anything. His name was Harry Potter and his luck had always been fluky, with a tilt to the problematic.

Harry pushed himself up and looked around. It could be so many places. Some place he'd gone camping before? The air smelled very clean.

He walked toward the trees and the narrow road. The unpaved road. That might be a clue. He was deep in a forest, then. He couldn't hear any cars, any noises other than the wind in the leaves.

He needed to figure out where he was - and then he might have a clue as to why he was somewhere very different from where he'd fallen asleep. This place was nowhere close to his family home. Harry knew his own land well enough to be sure.

Harry arrived at a crossroads and there was a rudimentary structure, one that looked like it was held together only with a vast amount of magic. Save that magic didn't seem to be a part of the building. Harry didn't feel a bit of it.

He had the sense he was no longer in the place he'd known. Or, in the time frame he'd known. He felt like...he felt like this was an exhibit in some Olde Timey outdoor museum. "Visit a medieval inn."

Harry didn't know if he looked appropriate to this region. This place was horses and dirt roads. Harry's clothes were not from the same century as carts pulled by horses.

Money... He had coins on him, gold, silver, and copper, but they would look wrong. Harry used his wand to make himself invisible and stalked closer to what he thought might be an inn.

He listened for a time at the window. There were a few people inside, talking.

The language... He didn't understand more than a few syllables of it.

He stood up and stared at the events inside. Harry got a look at a copper coin they used at a table where men were gambling. He managed to reform a knut into three of these smaller coins. That could be enough to buy him a lunch.

Harry needed to think about what in the hall had happened now. He hadn't been in a battle. He hadn't been experimenting with some arcane bit of magic. He had just gone to sleep.

He was invisible when he walked to the nearest stand of trees. He took off the spell and reworked his clothing.

When he walked back inside, he sat and grunted. Good enough. He was served a plate of chicken. He waved away the beer. The serving maid took all three coppers Harry slapped on the table. He hoped it would be enough. He should have transfigured more than one knut into this new currency.

Hold on... He hadn't had his coin purse on him when he went to sleep. Or his wand. But he had them both now. He wore different clothing than what he slept in...

This seemed more and more like something someone had done to Harry, something intentional. Someone had sent Harry away...or pulled him here.

Harry ate slowly and listened to the conversation. He began to recognize a few terms by the frequency with which he heard them. Baratheon was one. Lannister was another. Tully a third.

He began a plan. He needed a base. It's be nice if he had a tent, but no. He needed protection from the elements and food. He needed a way to learn the language. Then he could figure out what had happened, perhaps, and if there was a road - or, more likely, a bit of magic - that would return him to where he'd started from.

The chicken was delicious and Harry licked his fingers, as did the others at the Inn. He nodded at the serving maid when he departed.

He decided to set up something near to this place for now. At least until he had a bit of knowledge to fill his head. He was going to survive this just fine. It was like unexpectedly going camping in a foreign country, right? Of course, the less pragmatic part of him vowed that whoever had cast Harry here wouldn't enjoy it when Harry returned. That was a promise.

Just as soon as he got his energy back. Harry found he was exhausted from the little magic he had done, some invisibility spells and a little transfiguration. That did not bode well.

He found himself a place to nod off, after he applied a warming spell. There was a perpetual chill in the air.

He had a hard time falling asleep. His mind was worrying the details, working through the problem.

Harry was not going to be stuck someplace against his will. He just wouldn't allow it. He had family that would miss him, no wife at present, but children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and many more generations. Harry wasn't one of the oldest wizards on Earth for nothing. Sure, Flamel was still alive, even if he'd switched names again - and there were a few others who had cheated the rules of mortality. For a wizard with some skill or some luck, mortality was a foe that could be defeated.

This mess, too, was a foe Harry would unwind. Harry was going home.

As soon as he figured out what was going on. And recovered some of his magic.

XX

The boatman rarely gave his name and was almost never asked. The name he used was Terren, but that was a lie. He had long since given up whatever name and trade his father gave him.

He was a boatman as he approached his last years.

He had a good little gig. It had been some time since the Whents, or what was left of them, had bothered with appointing a boatman to ferry people to the Isle of Faces. Still, pilgrims and other travels wanted to go there. Some pilgrims wanted to visit all the Septs. Others wanted to visit the places dear to the Old Gods. Terren made his money off the later.

The nuts who wanted to walk among the trees on the Isle of Faces. Magicals, some were. Most didn't scare Terren.

The morning, one did. Terren recognized him as a local poacher who never got caught. The young man gave Terren a small handful of copper coins, but said nothing. It was clear enough what one wanted when one visited a boatman.

The young man was silent during the crossing and even upon arrival, which was rare.

People always talked. They announced where they were from, where they'd traveled. Those who had the time or money to travel, they almost always explained. The ones who didn't, well, they were keeping secrets. Spies or something meeting on a place like this. Stranger things had happened.

Terren was always a bit cautious of travelers - or even known locals - who kept their stories to themselves.

"You paid me enough to wait," Terren said. "How long will you be?"

The poacher shook his head.

"You need not wait for me. I can see myself back."

The accent was a strange one. Braavosi? Terren couldn't tell.

Then he stopped caring. The poacher was almost...glowing. It had to be the light, the way it hit the poacher.

"Your coin, your choice."

The poacher disappeared into the trees. And the tenor of the usually gloomy, heavy place. Terren could feel these trees...welcoming the poacher.

Was that possible?

He'd ferried a hundred men, maybe closer to a thousand. That had never happened before.

Who was the poacher?

What had the ferryman just made happen?

He had a great unease settle into his gut.

"In a week, on the next Tuesday, you will want to stay away from your boat. Otherwise, a small, well-dressed man will come and try to hire you. You and the man will not survive the crossing alive."

A greenseer. A real one...

"He would kill me?"

"He is being chased by one who would kill him. The arrow that finds him would also wound you, but not kill you. You, my helpful friend, would drown in the waters that you transit."

Horrible.

Horrible...

Terren had heard of the warnings of greenseers before. One ignored their gifts foolishly.

He felt considerably better. He had met a few of those. Peaceable types. This must be what it felt like the first time a true greenseer stepped onto the Isle. Terren had certainly never felt that before. Didn't want to feel it again.

Magic, he supposed.

That's what happened when you settled down to work in a magical place.

"What do I call the man who saved my life?"

"Call me Hardiven Rivers."

"I will not forget this."

"No, I don't suppose you will. Call me Harry, then."

XX

Harren the Black, as he was called in death, was trapped in the place where he and his sons had burned to death. His great mistake, Harrenhal. His people should have stuck to the Iron Islands and never come ashore. Raiders didn't take over the places they raided, not the smart ones at least.

Those three dragons. Well, who expected dragons in a land where they hadn't existed?

Harren rarely came into the keep itself. There were some horribly vile spirits here, some of them his sons, and he preferred not to have that pain.

He moved around the grounds, the trees that were taking over the clearings.

He watched people come and go.

He did not think much of his current caretaker, Whent. Another dozens floors inside the towers Harren had overseen were ruined since Harren last counted.

He was inside the keep on the day when the Leather Merchant arrived.

Harren had seen him before in the nearby woods. Always the same face, always unaging, somewhat like Harren's own ruined face.

That was certainly different.

People in the Riverlands led hard lives. The place was impossible to defend. Harren's own grandfather had conquered it and it had changed hands since then - dragons.

Raiders and floods and hard work and disease.

More ghosts came to Harrenhal every year. This place, for some reason, could hold them, sustain them.

Harren talked to some of them, terrorized some of the others.

Another servant burned to death the night before. One of his Harren's most loyal servants in life burned bad servants to death now. Nothing Harren could say would stop it.

It was the talk of the keep. Even the Leather Merchant was told a dozen times.

Harren made a point to observe the Leather Merchant as he spoke to different people in the castle.

Finally, the Leather Merchant found a quiet corner, for their were few people and much space in Harrenhal. He spoke with a ghost there, a timid thing that glowed for a few moments from the attention given her by the living.

Harren was next. He just pushed his way in.

"What are you that you can see a ghost that isn't trying to be seen?" the king demanded.

"I've heard of you," the Leather Merchant said.

"Well, answer my question."

"No."

Harren burst into flames. "Answer me."

"No."

Then Harren felt incredibly weak. The flames extinguished themselves.

"What are you?"

"An explorer, I guess."

"You can't stay here." Harren was terrified by this power he'd just experienced.

"It's convenient to the Isle of Faces. There is magic here, enough to keep a ghost around. Enough to keep me healthy."

"You eat magic, then?"

"I use magic."

"Wizard." Harren had heard them talked of, but never met one. That was a thing of Essos, not Westeros. Still, one had come.

"Yes."

"Why have you come?"

"For the magic."

"You would send us away," Harren said, fearful.

"The violent ones, yes."

The wizard might just suppose a ghost on fire qualified as violent. So, Harren understood something about power. He couldn't terrify this young man. He could befriend him, maybe. The surest plan? To become an ally.

"Show me. If you can do what you say, then I will aid you. I will tell you the secrets of this place."

"I can make you tell me. I do not need to impress you."

"Then show me that power."

"Tell me about Lady Whent and her late husband?"

Harren thought to abandon this pretender, but could not. Instead, he found himself explaining all that he knew.

"The gossip now," the Leather Merchant demanded.

The names of the girls the old Lord favored. The names of the foreign traders Lady Whent depended upon. Everything little and small.

Harren was now clear that the Leather Merchant had the power he hinted at, no mean braggart this.

What, in the Drowned God's mind, was he planning to do?

"You have experience with dragons, too?" the Leather Merchant asked.

"Yes."

Harren was famous for being on the wrong side of dragons.

"Tell me about them."

That was hard to do. Painful even to someone who no longer had a body. "One request, wizard."

"I will hear it."

"My sons. Please release them from their torment. I will stay to aid you, but release them."

The Leather Merchant considered the request.

"They are among the most violent?"

"Yes, to my shame."

"Lead me to them, one by one. I will aid you and you will aid me."

Harren the Black had struck his deal. Perhaps he could feel good about it. Perhaps, if he put his children to rest, he might seek rest as well. Perhaps.

For now, he would watch.

He would share a little of what he knew.

He would pay close attention to this Leather Merchant when he came to Harrenhal or poached from the woods or did his trading nearby.

"The dragons, ghost."

"Yes."

And Harren began to tell that tale. The brief moments he had stood against dragons. Why was this wizard interested in dragons, Harren wondered.

He supposed he would eventually find out.

XX

There were letters spread out on her desk, a dozen of them. In her husband's handwriting.

She had known there were bastards from her husband's dalliances.

But none of them had ever before produced letters in her late husband's hand. She could read them even in the poor light of her study. She should have more candles, but money was tight.

The bastard stood in front of her.

"I don't know how you got in here. Too big a place and not enough people in it. I'm busy and everyone wants something. According to that idiot Hoster Tully, I'm supposed to send men for this Greyjoy foolishness. I have no men." She spared a momentary glimpse for her present irritation. "What is it you want?"

"You believe these letters?"

"I loved him, but he was a famous fool. Yes, I believe them. I know he left a dozen children, at least. So, what do you want? I have no money. Your father's will left no provisions for his, not our, children."

"I want my father's name."

To change from Rivers to Whent... "A legalization. No. Never."

If she agreed to make one of her husband's sons a legal son of his, this bastard would rule at Harrenhal. She had no blood connection with him, none. He could kick her out without a thought, like the bones after a large haunch hit the fires and fed many, many men.

"You would have a home here in Harrenhal."

"But you would be the Lord."

"True."

"So, Lord of Harrenhal, we have no coin. How would you better the lives of the people?"

She had never asked herself that question - nor acted upon it. But she could hold others to a standard higher than what she charged herself. That was always the way of things.

She didn't get her answer.

She, without quite knowing why, pulled a sheet of parchment and began drafting a letter to Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King.

She begged Arryn's help in convincing Robert, who had a great cast of bastards of his own, to legalize the most successful of her late husband's children, the one who had become wealthy as a trader in furs and leathers. She needed younger blood to manage Harrenhal, along with the coin he would bring and his mind for improving the trades and commerce in the area.

She handed the letter to the bastard. He read it and then performed...something on it. Was he blessing it or something?

"I will see this finds its way to the Hand."

"Jon Arryn will never agree. He will see no benefit in it."

"Well, you have written a fine letter. Perhaps he may consent and argue the matter before the King."

"He will not."

Why had she done that?

It was like she had cut her own throat because of a moment's dark mood.

Why?

"I promise you will live comfortably, stepmother. I promise to make Harrenhal beautiful again. I promise to bring back the power of this place."

"How?"

"Magic."

Was that what she had felt and seen? Magic.

"I know the secrets of this place. I have an illustrious tutor."

"Who?"

"The ghost of one of the first occupants, Harren Hoare."

"I've seen him. He would rather kill than talk."

The bastard just smiled.

XX

Jon Arryn returned to his tower after a long day where his second pile of work awaited. Of course there were more letters waiting for him. He had a servant fetch him some dinner, while he looked for Lysa, but she was elsewhere. Then he looked in on his son, such a sickly child. The nurse gave a good report. Always a good report, but no progress. She would make a good politician.

Jon Arryn returned to his desk and ate and read.

Putting down this Greyjoy nonsense was going to take some time. They'd destroyed the bulk of the Lannister fleet. Trust it to a Greyjoy to be the first to get one over on Tywin.

He picked up the next letter and read it. His fingers tingled and he spent far longer on the letter than he should have.

A legalization of a bastard...

If the King read this letter, there would be a new Lord Whent. The King was fond of bastards, assuming he was in a good mood.

A new Whent. Was that the best thing for Harrenhal or for the Kingdom?

Robert...

Robert was not a fine King. Not diligent, uncaring even.

Jon and his legion of helpers had been shoring up Robert's rule for many years. He had pushed the old dynasty out of King's Landing, but had not yet sunk his roots into this one.

Using Harrenhal as a reward for a loyal subject...

That could be valuable.

Robert didn't have much trouble in the Riverlands. It would have been better if Harrenhal were in the Westerlands or the Reach. But, a lavish reward was a lavish reward.

Jon Arryn preferred not to squander anything.

He was an old man, of a frugal mind. He knew fear and he knew how to head off new fears. For his child, Robert. Sure, he hadn't fathered the King, but he had raised him.

Lord Arryn now had a child of his own, named Robert although Lysa called him Robin, but most of his long life had been childless, until he had agreed to foster two young men, a Baratheon named Robert and a Stark named Eddard.

His life had twisted in such a way that, while Eddard had left his care, Jon was still fostering the Baratheon. Although their positions had ostensibly reversed. Robert was king now and Jon was his chief advisor, his Hand.

Still, Jon was the father, protecting and encouraging.

Robert was the child, still fit to tantrums and lavish excess.

Harrenhal was necessary for Robert and Robert's son, Joffrey, to secure the dynasty.

Harrenhal wouldn't be given to a bastard.

Lord Arryn threw the letter away, unanswered.

He did not notice his hand put it into a pile for his scribes to handle - and for the King to sign.

Jon went back to documents from the Vale, which he still ruled. Plus documents from every other corner of the Kingdom. Notes from his spies to keep everyone else honest, especially Varys.

When Lord Arryn's night clerk came for the evening's work, Jon pushed the pile of paper to him.

Three days later, he signed a brief note and enclosed some other papers in a packet for Lady Whent. He had a hard time remembering what the subject matter was. Probably complaints or excuses. That was what she specialized in. Arryn made a mental note that no Whent men-at-arms would be joining to put down the Greyjoy mess.

The raven flew out in the morning.

Lord Arryn did not comprehend that Harrenhal had a new lord.

It would be thirty days before he remembered something and had his scribes bring him some old documents. There was nothing to do, the order was signed. He was slipping and Robert would sign anything put in front of him.

Harrenhal was out of his gift now. He decided to keep that secret. The King, certainly, would say nothing. He was leaving for the Iron Islands very soon. War made him happy like little else did.

XX

The King's procession had turned off the road leading north. They were now headed west some distance to Harrenhal. Robert still didn't know why he'd let Littlefinger talk him into stopping here on his way north. He needed to get to Winterfell quickly.

Perhaps the devious shit was hinting that he would like to be the next master of that ruined pile.

Baelish had long been subtle that way, ever since Jon Arryn stuck him on the Small Council. The late Lord Arryn had done many great things for the Kingdom, but elevating Littlefinger hadn't been one of them.

Robert really should do something about Baelish. His smile, his small, calm voice. Robert didn't trust a man like that, even if he did find some good women.

Robert was going to Harrenhal for some reason he didn't understand. But he had no intention of making Baelish a gift of Harrenhal. He'd already given it away, not that Littlefinger seemed to realize it.

Harrenhal had a lord, a Whent. A bastard Whent, but still a Whent. Robert had long ago legitimized one of the late Lord Whent's bastards so the place had a proper Lord now, not just a mopey old woman waiting to die. Robert was still surprised he'd agreed, but the request had caught him in a particular mood. He'd signed the paper before he even mentioned the issue to Jon Arryn. Jon would have wanted to save it for someone else, as a reward. Robert might not go to many meetings, but he knew what his counselors would say.

Or what they used to say.

Now Jon was dead and Robert was about to meet this Whent bastard for the first time. Robert remembered other stories of Harrenhal, but he pushed past the old ones.

The new ones were more of interest. He had heard that this bastard Whent was fostering bastards, now. Hadn't Catelyn Stark forced her husband Ned to send that little Snow boy down here? She used her father's influence to see another River lord - the most disgraced one - take in what she didn't want to look at. That woman was as big a bitch as her sister Lysa, poor Jon Arryn had been forced to handle her - or Robert's own bitter bride, the prickly beauty of Casterly Rock. So many women auctioned off for support in a war.

Robert still had no love for Hoster Tully's negotiating tactics. _Marry my daughters or I'll remain neutral._ He hadn't used precisely those words, but the meaning had been clear enough. Ned and Jon had taken those hits. Robert's came later.

Robert still hated Tywin Lannister. Made use of him, sure, borrowed his money. But hated him. Hated all those Lions.

Robert took a deep drink of wine. _To bastards._ Tywin might have had parents who were married, but he was a bastard. More than Lord Whent and all the others. At least the bastard of Harrenhal kept Littlefinger from becoming lord of a bigger parcel of land. The Master of Coins had a stomach that was bigger than the Seven Kingdoms. He was a schemer. When Robert was younger, and soberer, he'd delighted in taking the heads of schemers.

The King looked out the window of the wheelhouse, the covered carriage his wife insisted on. Robert would ride on his own horse when they rode into Winterfell. Today, he would sit with the women for a while. Lord Whent couldn't demand any better.

"I didn't think the Riverlands were this prosperous," Robert said.

"Yes." Cersei stopped looking at the view then. She rather curled up and pretended to sleep.

What a vicious creature he'd married.

The further they rode away from the Kingsroad, the more growth Robert saw. It was vastly different from what Robert remembered. People were working the fields, they had crops that would make a Tyrell jealous. Grain crops, potato crops, a farm with a thousand head of beef, at least three breweries, all the things Robert liked when he sat down to dine.

He expected to eat well that evening in Harrenhal, ghosts or no.

There were no cities here, but there a half dozen villages scattered along the road. They were new since the last time Robert had ventured this way. He remembered well that Tourney hosted by a different Whent. It had been the start of the bloodletting that saw Robert on the throne, the Targaryens burned, and Lyanna Stark dead.

There was an ungated wall. As they rode past the new construction, Robert felt a gust of wind. Cersei gave up her pretense of sleeping. She sat and looked bored.

She had spent more than a decade looking bored.

Robert wished he could put her away, but the money, Tywin's gold, protected her.

He would have to put up with her little sighs. It was better than her screaming at him. The road to Winterfell stretched much further than it did to Harrenhal. What a hellish trip. He should send her back to King's Landing. Her mood would just make Winterfell, a bleak place, even bleaker.

It was nearing noon when Robert saw the second ungated walls. The first set now made more of an impression on him. These were defensive structures in an area that had seen every war ever fought spill into.

It was nearing dark when Robert saw the fortifications of Harrenhal itself. The five towers Robert remembered from that blasted tournament were now nine, at least.

When they were within sight of the monstrous castle, the winds returned stronger, harsher. The horses spooked. This place was a three hundred year old grave - and he was willingly journeying there. It still terrified people.

Someone could peel off half the citizenry of King's Landing, shove them into this monstrosity, and still have room. Plus the forest had grown much closer. It was an altogether different look to the place.

How in the Stranger's name hadn't Robert heard of this rebuilding?

He didn't have much time to consider the question. His group was met outside of the castle by at least two hundred men-at-arms. In the center of the greeting party was a small man, dark of hair, who carried no sword. Lord Whent didn't look like much.

Robert's servants got him out of the carriage. He redoubled his vow not to ride in the thing on the day he finally arrived at Winterfell, like some silly woman. In front of this Whent, he didn't care. In front of Ned...

Lord Whent bowed while the others were on their knee. That was damned cheeky. Men bent the knee for their King, but not this Whent?

"King Robert, the courtesy of Harrenhal is yours for as long as you wish."

Another weird gust of wind blew through the crowd. Any dread he had felt about coming to this place vanished. Weird weather.

"We were trying to sneak up on you," Robert said. "We did not succeed."

"We had plenty of notice you were coming, King Robert."

Did this Whent have his own spies in King's Landing - or just a lookout at the crossroad? Robert didn't care that much, not really. His entire life was spent being spied upon.

"How have you done this? Reformed this tomb? Replaced all the...well, melted stones. I wasn't one for history, but it took three generations to build it. You've been lord here, five years now?"

"Seven, your Grace."

"This is some major work for just a few years."

"May I show her to you?" Whent asked.

Robert looked back. Let the handlers take care of Cersei and Joffrey and the rest of them.

"Please."

Robert's guards fell in then.

Lord Whent had no guards attend to him. He was very confident.

"I forget your name. What do I call you?" Robert asked. He had signed the paper years earlier, but names weren't his strength. Especially if he'd have a heavy day of drinking.

"Hardiven Whent."

That was an unkind name. Hardiven. Even when he'd been Hardiven Rivers or maybe Hardiven Flowers or Hardiven Waters, depending upon where he'd been born. "Your father had no love for you," Robert said.

"Please call me Harry."

That was better. "You don't stand on formality."

"No. Never have. I don't know if you've ever visited here before?"

In an event that sat heavily in his mind. "Before I was king, yes."

The doors at the other end of the tunnel they'd been walking through flew open and Robert stepped into a courtyard of monstrous proportions. Robert revised his opinion. One might be able to build the Red Keep from King's Landing in just the space of this courtyard.

The largest difference from his previous visit? Harrenhal was filled with people. Whent's people. That cost gold, a lot of gold.

"Bigger than I remember."

"Yes, your Grace."

"You've put up quite a few bastards, I hear."

Whent didn't even flinch. Robert did like to take the measure of a man.

"I host them or foster them. All good people."

"Harrenhal has that reputation now?" Robert asked, a bit annoyed.

"Lord Tully has asked a few favors of my stepmother. I've been glad to oblige."

His irritation shifted, as he admitted to himself that it often did. "Hoster doesn't even have the grace to ask you himself?"

"I think he cannot forget my beginnings."

Just like the old monster.

Robert might have been a better king if he'd had better lords. Or, at least, that was what he told himself. With friends like Hoster and Tywin and Mace Tyrell...was it any wonder Robert's form had more in common with a walking hill than a normal shaped man? The stresses...

"You have a very young look to you. How many years are you?"

"One and twenty, your Grace."

"You look younger still. What I would give for just one and twenty."

"Yes, your Grace."

This Lord Whent was young, but damn if he didn't have Jon Arryn's polish. More than that. More than any Maester Robert had met.

What a strange little lord.

"We should see about getting you a wife."

"With the noise Lord Hoster Tully makes about me, that would be a trick."

Robert nodded. Backwards Hoster and the Dunce Daughters. Robert had heard the heir, Edmure, was a pure idiot. Spoiled and worthless. Robert wished he would be the one to repay Hoster for his _generosity_.

"The ride was instructional. How are you making these lands grow?" Robert asked.

Lord Whent smiled. "I am very pleased you noticed."

"We should rename this place Highgarden, perhaps."

"Well, we grow few flowers. We have much land, but we also have many hungry mouths."

"Yes. You didn't answer my question. How do you do it?"

"I know you are on your way to Winterfell."

Everyone had spies, even minor lords. It was irritating, but it wasn't an answer to Robert's question.

"Yes." Still, he answered it.

"As they say up north, winter is coming. We are just preparing."

"To this extent? You must be a wizard with the grapes, then."

"Just a good administrator," Lord Whent insisted. "Grain is as important as swords to a castle like this one."

"And the gold to do it all?"

"We sell a large portion of our crop."

Again something Robert had not heard. Hadn't Jon Arryn known about this place? Or had this been mentioned in some Small Council meeting or other? Robert really shouldn't have distanced himself that much. Too late now.

"Oh?"

"All of our neighbors, even the Ironborn. They claim they do not sow, but they like malted beverages just fine."

Robert roared with laughter. Yes, the Greyjoys enjoyed their drink. And here was where they got it.

"What are those three towers?" Robert asked. "They look new."

"Well, they are built with old stone. Some of the towers here were in bad condition."

"But what are they?"

"The outer two are water towers."

"Water? Inside a tower, inside a castle?"

"Four years' supply, if we're careful, should a siege ever settle in."

Four years of safe water... Lord Whent was getting ready for war. Or he was quite insane.

"The middle one?"

"We are able to use the water towers to help cool the middle tower. We have it stored with perishable foods, King Robert."

"Four years of food?"

"Well, not quite that much."

"It's impressive, Lord Whent. What about the small tower?"

"The Lord's Tower. It was also fashioned from stone we pulled down from damaged towers."

It looked pristine. Someone had gone to much effort to clean the stone. Three hundred years of damage... This man must be a wizard.

"You have done much work here in not very much time."

"Let us cross over into the next courtyard. You might recognize the towers there more than these."

Robert nodded. He did recognize everything there, although it all looked a bit smaller. They'd pulled down the highest floors and repurposed that stone. The whole place was monstrous, but perhaps less imposing than what Robert remembered of the place.

After all, it was now filled with people - and not just bad memories and the stories of ghosts in flame.

They turned and walked down a corridor. "Perhaps you'd like to see some of our defenses?"

"I've been on the other side of the wall once a time. I would."

Lord Whent had to unlock and relock about nine doors or steel gates before they were in the belly of the defenses. Robert had a sense of exactly how impregnable these stones were. Eighteen feet thick, he would say. Without dragons to fly over the walls, this castle would not have been easily taken.

Then Robert realized he was alone with Whent. None of his guards were with him. How had that happened?

"Where are my guards?" Robert demanded.

"Waiting for us."

"They never leave me alone."

"They'll rejoin us. After we finish."

"I've a mind to beat them bloody for leaving us."

"They didn't leave. They're just standing, asleep, out there." Whent pointed toward a locked door. Locked and barred, actually. Robert hadn't noticed anything at the time.

Robert felt a deep stab of fear in that moment. It was unlike anything he'd felt in years, since the Greyjoys felt treasonous.

"Let me out."

"We're safe in here."

"You might be, but I don't know you. I am your King, let me out."

Whent's graceful appearance cracked a little.

"We have much to discuss first."

"I am your King, boy."

"Robert Baratheon, you might once have been a warrior, but now you rather resemble a bung of bad wine. You get no respect from me."

Was this an imposter? An assassin?

Robert tried to shove Lord Whent, but found he couldn't move.

"I thought we should speak together, just the two of us."

"Release me. Give me the antidote to whatever poison you've used on me."

Lord Whent sat down on a chair that Robert hadn't noticed. Robert tried to speak, but found he could not.

"I arrived here in the first year after you took the throne. Perhaps within weeks of your marriage to Cersei Lannister. It took me many years before I learned the language and decided on what I had to do."

"What did you do?"

"I had myself adopted into the Whent family."

Robert strained at that. He suddenly found he could talk. "So you're not a bastard of old Lord Whent?"

"I'm older than anyone alive in Westeros. I could have been his great-great-grandfather. So, no."

Robert shook his head a little. What the boy had just said made no sense, but Robert was also sure that it was no lie.

"You don't like being king, do you?" Lord Whent asked.

Yes. "No."

That wasn't what he wanted to say.

He glared at this strange person...this wizard.

"I see you don't like your children or your wife."

Robert said nothing.

"You've surrounded yourself with your worst enemies. No wonder you don't enjoy being King. You shouldn't trouble Eddard Stark. Just let Tywin Lannister return to serving as the Hand of the King. He's already in control over everything because of your gold issues."

It was all true, but Robert would make sure Whent would pay for telling him things he didn't want to hear again.

"You don't care. You know what the problems are, but you don't try to do anything with them. Wine and women. It'll fix nothing."

"There are no problems," Robert said.

Whent stared at Robert a moment before he closed his eyes and then looked, almost ashamed, at the floor for a moment. When he looked back at Robert he was serious, deadly so. "You'll be dead inside a year. Your wife will arrange it, drugging your drink before you go out hunting. Your death will start a war for the succession that will last...years."

"How do you know any of this?"

"Where I came from, I was as much a seer as a chunk of stone. Here, so close to the Isle of Faces, I can sometimes get a sense of things, future things. It's quite irritating, to be honest. Many of my other powers are comparatively weaker."

"This is weakness? You could have killed me a hundred times by now."

Whent also didn't flinch at that. He knew. He knew it and had considered it. Still, Robert was alive. "I cannot fix these problems myself. I am just a minor lord, although with some unusual powers. I shouldn't need to fix the problems here."

"No?"

"You could fix them."

Whenever Robert thought of problems, he reached for wine.

"What of your magic?"

"For now, I can see the problems. Not fix them."

"If you can leave me this incapacitated, you could fix them."

Whent shook his head.

"You could take heads until it was fixed - or everyone was headless."

"I will be as honest as I can. I find that I can protect myself from an attack with no problem, my power, my magic, will permit me to do that. I can do a few simple things to warn off a person, but I cannot just strike someone down, even to prevent something that might happen in the future. I did something to a person once, my 'stepmother,' I made her obey me in getting me made lord of this place. Immediately after, I was weakened for months. It's frustrating. I don't understand why and I haven't found a way around it."

Perhaps, if Robert survived this interview, he could make use of this weakness. Whent made a good first showing, but how strong was he really?

"I could have just watched you blunder into your own death, but I cannot stand to do as little as my own mentor did for me. Hinting, lying. That old man must have had a series of very poor mentors himself. I will try something different with you, Robert Baratheon. Let's see if we get a different result. Let's see if we can give you a few more years of life."

"What do you want?"

"I want you to live longer than a year. I want you to bring some balance to your allies, the Lannisters."

"Balance? That's all?"

"I don't know what else I can do to save you. I can't fight your battle for you. You don't seem willing to fight them for yourself. Once a brave man, you now seem a coward."

"I am not."

"I wonder if you had just a little courage and spent it down quickly."

Of course, he was brave in the way that a man could be if he lived at the bottom of a flagon of wine. Would have, could have, dreaming of the past, dreaming of a future that could gone very sour.

"What kind of balance do you suggest, wizard?"

Whent looked at Robert as if he were stupid. "The Lannisters seek everything. Tell me how to balance that."

That was the truth. Lannisters would only be in balance when they were territory for worms. "They have bigger stomachs than I, though they do not show it."

"Yes."

"You want me to stop my wife's scheming, her father's?"

"If you wish to keep your Kingdoms, yes."

"I'd have to kill my wife, my wife's family. All of them."

"If you cannot control their...eagerness...for conquest, then..."

How he had dreamt of it. He had killed Rhaegar. But Tywin had gotten away. Cersei... He loathed all of them. "So, you, what are you doing? You ask me to handle the Lannisters."

"I concentrate on magic," the Whent said with a shrug.

Not much help that. He was all words and no damned help. "Magic is dead in this land," he snarled.

"Almost."

That stopped him a moment.

Robert remembered what he had seen. A Harrenhal that did not look melted, that had grown in size, crops that were healthy and numerous. He could believe in magic. That, and it was likely how he'd been parted from his guards.

"I am trying to bring back magic into this land. For you, for everyone, but mostly for myself. I wish to return to my home - and, for that, I need more magic. For the last fifteen years I have felt magic strengthening. I have come to believe that this planet has a strange relationship with magic, it ebbs and flows in long, long cycles. We're on a return now. Magic is reawakening everywhere. Trying to, at least. It's not easy for it."

"I don't understand," Robert said.

"I'm told you have the skulls of dragons in your dungeon."

"Yes."

"That is magic. That is the kind of magic that wants to return."

"Dragons, no."

Whent gave up the topic. Robert was terrified at the things he had been told, but couldn't understand.

"You will not be budged? Not even to save yourself?"

"You haven't told me how, boy."

Whent glared at Robert, like a master-at-arms about to teach a small boy what it really meant to wield a sword. "You plan to ask Eddard Stark to return with you to King's Landing, to run the government for you?"

"No one knows that."

"Everyone in your group does. Now I do as well."

Gossiping... Robert could slaughter them all. This...very dangerous person...now had information that could hurt Robert, could hurt Ned, could hurt the country. Successions in power, whether kings or their appointed heads of government, were always dangerous times.

"Take someone else. Veer off this path north. Or, perhaps continue until you get to the path to Riverrun. Ask a Tully to do it. Even ask a Lannister."

"I have more Lannisters than we have biting flies."

It was both clever and too true. The damned Lannisters caused more irritation and pain.

"Do you want to live until you're an old man?" Whent asked.

"Of course."

"And you're unwilling to do the necessary."

"Start a war with my father-in-law?"

"Then, you must mind your wife...and her ego. You do not want to appoint someone your wife will consider an enemy. She and Ned Stark will clash, you know it."

"So I should appoint her father? You were trying to get me to kill them or tame them or some gibberish."

"Yes, I did ask that. You refused on the grounds it was too hard. Now you must surround yourself with ineffectual Tullys or rather clever Lannisters if you desire peace...and long life."

"It's not peace, boy. It's just the cessation of violence."

"Whose fault is that?" Whent asked.

There was only one answer. Robert had been too tired, too ruined, to finish the job many years earlier. Rather than slaughtering the Lannisters, he'd allied with them. Married their bitch into his family, allowed her to bear fair-haired heirs... No, he wouldn't think of that now, no matter how much Whent demanded.

He was a King.

This might be his last day on Westeros, but he wouldn't blubber. If it was a meeting with the Stranger, so be it.

"If you value your friend Stark at all, if you value his sacrifices for you, you will find someone else."

"I could promote Petyr Baelish," Robert growled.

"Well, if you prefer to be killed by him rather than your wife."

That pulled Robert from his funk for a moment. "You really are a seer, aren't you? One of those greenseers supposedly from around her."

"You don't have a name for what I am," the Whent said.

Whent wasn't going to hurt Robert. He wasn't going to extract a promise either. Robert and Jon had puzzled over it all before. If they'd done something early, before Robert married Cersei, if...

That wasn't how the history went.

"I've heard what you've said," Robert said.

"But it was all wasted breath, wasn't it?"

"I'll consider it." Assuming he left the room alive. Robert knew how foolish it was to defy someone with this kind of power. However, he knew he couldn't run seven kingdoms, let alone one, without help.

"Then I will leave you with this. Your wife will kill you. Your son will murder your dear friend. Your kingdoms will erupt in fire and war. All because you are a fool and a coward."

The young lord gestures with his hand - or with a thin stick in his hand, maybe - and the room was suddenly bright and warm and filled with furniture.

"You may sleep here tonight. You will never be able to tell anyone the words I spoke. I hope you will turn away from this path. Know this, I am sworn only to you. Once you are dead..."

That there might be the most terrifying thing the boy - the seer - had yet said.

Suddenly Robert was alone in the comfortable room and his memory of the conversation immediately dimmed. He drank all the wine he could find and fell asleep, fully clothed, on the bed, without even demanding a whore for the evening.

The next morning, the King's party departed.

Several miles away from Harrenhal, Robert looked at the wife he did not love. There was something he couldn't remember about the last day. Although there was one idea he could still remember... "You will outlive me."

"Maybe," the bitch Cersei said.

"When you do, never anger that lord."

"Whent? He was small, tiny. Large castle, tiny lord."

Robert shook his head. "A Targaryen trio of dragons once managed to destroy Harrenhal..."

"I learned my history."

Robert still felt fear from being in Harrenhal. Not the fear of ghosts, if they existed. A different fear, one he couldn't quite describe.

"Now, I think that Lord Whent would withstand three dragons."

Cersei glared at Robert. "I didn't see anything to be worried about."

Robert could not - physically could not - remember the magic he'd seen.

"He had at least twelve towers and the men to fill them."

"That all costs money. Lord Whent's men could easily be my father's men with the proper application of gold."

She was not listening.

Robert had tried. He didn't know why he'd done it, but he had.

Cersei and that...monster would tangle in the future. Cersei would not win. Robert wished he'd be alive to see it. He would just enjoy the life he had left.

He had tried.

Not well, not very hard. He had used up all of his vigor in the earlier part of his life. Wasn't it sad now that the best he could do, as a King, was to say that he'd tried? He had spent the last ten years just waiting to die. He had no crowns to win, no towers to build, no mark he wanted to leave.

He had been, and would always be, a man who had stopped having grand ambitions. That was oblivion, Robert knew. He was living out the end of it.

XX


	2. Chapter 2

**The Wizard of Harrenhal**

 _Chapter 2_

XX

A/N: Yes, Harry's magic is presently weak compared to his past levels. He is dedicated to changing that situation, as this chapter reveals.

Yes, Harry has a different goal than usual in a HP/GoT cross. He doesn't want to stay and make things better. He's making things better, for himself and for magic, so that he can leave, if he can figure out how. I thought that was a nice twist to play with.

Yes, this and future chapters take place during canon GoT events, although I am altering the plot based on Harry's presence in the world. (Chapter 1 events all take place prior to King Robert's arrival in Winterfell.) Sometimes I will adopt the ideas presented in the books. Sometimes I will adopt the ideas presented in the TV show. Sometimes, I will make stuff up.

Yes, there will be one or two more chapters, not twenty. It's heresy, I know, but this great storyline shouldn't need millions of words to complete.

Yes, I have a draft of the ending written.

XX

Jon Snow didn't understand why exactly, but he had put off his day's sword practice at Lord Whent's specific request. He was now outside, well away from Harrenhal, planting cuttings of trees in the soil. Gardening instead of training with a sword... It seemed madness to Jon, but when a lord asks, his ward doesn't say no.

He and Orvis Snow, who looked like one of the Stark bannermen, the Umbers, were with Lord Whent.

"If you have a question, you can ask," Lord Whent said.

Jon had more than a question, but a rather rude observation popped out of his mouth before he could stop it. "We should be training to fight."

Jon looked horrified.

Lord Whent was not stern as his father, Lord Stark, could be. But when he was unhappy, he brought the temperature of the room down.

The comment just amused the lord, by sheer luck.

"The war will not touch us for a time," Lord Whent said. "I have fitted the gates into the three sets of walls and instructed those who need to know how to open them. We need their harvest and they need the tools we produce."

"Any army could batter them down."

Lord Whent smiled like he possessed a great joke he was reluctant to tell. Instead of speaking, he pointed to the wall. Which was nothing like the Wall north of Winterfell. A large dog could hop over it.

"It doesn't look like much?" Lord Whent asked.

Jon knew it covered a great distance, but the section he could see... it wasn't much. He had been within forty feet of some section of the wall all morning. They'd been making good progress moving around it, on the inner portion, closer to Harrenhal. It never got taller than this, not that Jon had seen.

"It's not very tall. Any man, even a man in plate, could climb it."

"Try."

Jon Snow had never backed down from a challenge. He looked at Orvis, but the older boy shook his head. Lord Whent always had a trick.

"You want to leave your knife behind, Jon. Any metal on you."

"It will not weigh me down."

"So be it."

Jon walked to the wall and made to climb it. But he found himself stuck...on the wall. He couldn't move his middle section, near to where he wore his knife. His hands and legs could move, but they didn't have the strength to budge him.

"Do you see now?" Lord Whent asked.

Jon fell free from the wall.

"No."

"Metal. The wall is very attracted to metal."

"How?"

Lord Whent shook his head.

"But if I threw my knife over...then I could climb it with no troubles."

"Try it."

Jon pulled his knife and threw it over...but the knife thumped to the rounded top of the wall. It stuck. How in the...

Lord Whent walked over and plucked it off the wall.

"You won't tell me?" Jon asked.

"When you can tell me how it works, I'll say if you're right. I don't just want the men of Harrenhal to have strong arms. We all need some strong minds, do you understand?"

Jon glowered.

They all went back to putting cuttings in the ground.

Jon still didn't see the point of it. Nor why a powerful Lord was doing a part of the work himself.

This was work for servants or wards, boys like Jon and Orvis. Lord Whent...why was he here, too. And so few others?

"I don't understand why you put the gates in the wall," Orvis said.

"What does the castle gossip say?" Lord Whent asked the boy.

"It's confused."

"Well, I will see if we can unconfuse it."

"Yes, my Lord."

Lord Whent looked at Jon. "You heard about Bran?"

Jon scowled. "I did."

Lord Whent looked at Orvis, who had no idea. "Bran Stark, the second son of Lord Stark, fell - or was pushed - while climbing. He is alive, but in a coma. Then a person attempted to kill him..."

"A killer? An assassin?"

"Yes. Lady Stark, Bran's mother, believed it to be the work of the Lannisters. King Robert married into that family and many of them were in Winterfell at the time. Specifically, she believed it was the work of Tyrion Lann-"

"The Imp."

"Yes. What a horrible name for him, Imp, but Tyrion is little better."

"But why did..."

"The raiding nearby?"

"Yes," Orvis said.

"Lady Stark captured Tyrion Lannister through what means I still haven't heard. Well, not a clear answer. What happened was enough for Tywin Lannister, Tyrion's father, to make his unhappiness known."

"Why attack here? Why not more in the North?"

"You may remember that Catelyn Stark was born Catelyn Tully of Riverrun. Her father is lord here. Tywin is attacking close to his own lands, but he's attempting to make his fury known to the Tullys and the Starks."

"Oh."

Jon felt bad for Orvis. He was keen enough with the sword, but everything above that...it was not his realm.

"So I have to tell you how the wall works?" Jon asked, to clarify.

"If you get it right, I'll tell you you got it right. But no hints."

"Well, I can say a hundred wrong things and I'll know they're wrong."

"True, if you consider that to be hints, have as many as you care."

Jon considered it.

Then he returned to putting the cuttings in the ground.

"Why would the raiders want to come here?" Orvis asked. He nodded at the wall. It had obviously taken a lot of men much effort to raise.

"The reputation of Harrenhal, its size, the land that comes with it, the hard work of our farmers, millers, brewers, and the rest. We are a place of riches now, young men."

"They would come here for our beer?" Jon asked, smiling.

That amused Lord Whent. "Men have traveled the world for far less."

They then went back to planting.

They made good time around the wall. By the time the sun was a quarter to setting, Jon could look back with some pride at the work. A good day. They could get back into the cart and return to Harrenhal for supper.

Until...

"What's that noise?" Jon asked.

Everyone else was still a moment.

"Raiders," Lord Whent said. "I guess they are here for our riches."

Just a short wall separated Jon and his Lord from these...savages.

Jon reached for his sword...and found he had just a knife.

What a time to be without steel.

Lord Whent moved so quickly it was like he was never there. Jon noticed him at the top of the wall.

Jon could let him stand alone.

He quashed his regrets and shed the steel he had on him. Then he climbed up after his Lord.

The raiders...they were better called a small army.

"What do I do?" Orvis asked.

"Just wait," Lord Whent said.

"I could take the horses and the cart

Jon waved the boy silent.

Lord Whent looked down on the raiders. "Why have you come?"

Jon saw the leader. He was huge and could barely grunt.

Lord Whent stared at them for a few moments. "I'm quite unhappy with the damage you've done to the crops I've worked so hard on. Found them hard to burn, didn't you?"

"Everything burns. Even little Lords," the mammoth staring at them said.

"The Riverlands could be a paradise of food, aside from fools like you trooping through, raiding and slashing."

"I have a warrant from Lord Lannister...," another of the raiders said.

"Lord Lannister can make you all land pirates? Sure. Can he protect you from the price you'll pay? No."

"Lord..."

"Lannister, I heard you. Is he the lord of the Riverlands? No. Lord Tully would piss on your warrant."

The big one got off his huge horse.

"Well, I think we shall handle the matter this way. You all shall become the guests of Harrenhal for a time. I rebuilt the prison cells..."

"Don't you mean dungeons?" the Lannister raider asked.

"In the Riverlands, we are always at risk of flooding. We need you safe, for ransom or other reasons. I put the cells high up in the curtain wall. Less chance of escape."

Apparently the big one wasn't free from all fears. He had tensed when Lord Whent mentioned exactly where the cells were. The very tall man was apparently afraid of heights.

The huge man drew his sword.

Lord Whent drew...a thin piece of tree branch.

Jon knew they were all going to die.

The steel would slice right through that bit of wood.

Jon almost missed what happened next.

A field's worth of stones lifted off the ground, moved around a little in the air, and then plummeted at the same instant.

The big one got hit with three large stones and it barely phased him.

He stood alone at that point.

His fellows were all bleeding on the ground.

"I should have guessed your skull would be so thick," Lord Whent said.

The huge man slashed at Lord Whent's feet on the wall...and his sword stuck to it.

Then he stuck to the wall when he tried to pry his sword free. Jon guessed the man's armor would immobilize all points of him, not just his waist.

"The Mountain That Rides."

Jon had heard that name before. But, this monster...this was the Mountain, Gregor Clegane? Ser Gregor. He was a knight. Why was he raiding...

Oh, he served the Lannisters.

Even a knight could do evil. Jon supposed he knew that, but it was still hard to see all these raiders, some of them knights, bloodied. Beaten by a little stick.

The stick.

"Let me down," the Mountain demanded.

"That was certainly not graceful. It's been a long, long time since I was in a scrap." Lord Whent had won a great victory, but sounded disgusted with himself.

"What happened?" Orvis called out from the other side of the wall, the safe side.

"Let me..."

There was no more sound from the huge man.

Lord Whent put away his stick, then.

"It was magic," Jon said. "What you did to them."

"Continue."

"It's how you made this wall. How am I even standing on a rounded wall?"

"You ask good questions, Job. You're also correct."

"But..."

Magic.

Old Nan would tell tales that everyone else said not to believe.

It was...true.

"Watch carefully."

The stick came out again and the incapacitated men on the ground wrapped in ropes or tree roots.

The ones that covered the Mountain were thicker than Jon's wrist.

Then they...well, flew over the wall. Lord Whent willed them well away from where they'd been planting the tree cuttings. They were all laid out on the grass, not moving. None of them. But, aside from some drying blood on a few skulls, they were all uninjured.

"How are they flying?" Orvis Snow asked. He stared and stared and could not even respond to his own name.

Jon agreed with the question, how, but he didn't expect an answer.

Lord Whent hopped down from the wall.

Jon climbed down.

"Let me show you both something else."

Lord Whent used that stick again. He just waved it around. Then all the cuttings they'd put into the ground...they began to grow. Fast. Like how a fire could grow. But this was bark and tiny leaves just shooting out of the ground.

Orvis screamed like he'd been stepped on.

They grew and grew.

They were up past a foot already with the leaves that were the size of a thumb nail.

They just stood, silent, as they watched the trees grow.

This was magic beyond anything else Jon had seen this day.

Then...

There... In the distance. Jon saw a tree of white bark and red leaves. All the other trees Jon could see looked normal...save that one.

He had often seen a tree like that before, in the Godswood at Winterfell.

Heartwood.

Magic, Jon summarized. The old gods and the magic that Old Nan had nattered on about from time to time.

Jon turned the events over in his mind.

Magic.

He wanted to know everything now.

The details...the questions he had...where to start?

"How did you know exactly who they were?" Jon asked. "You'd never seen a Clegane before, had you?"

"I am now strong enough to resume reading minds."

Jon's eyes widened. Reading minds...then the word resume. He had done it before and then stopped and now could again. What if he...what if he did it to Jon?

"You are so straightforward, there is no need to read your thoughts. The horror on your face. Don't worry."

Jon smiled, but didn't mean it.

"It was good luck we were here," Orvis said.

"It was no luck."

"You knew they were coming?" Jon asked.

"I did."

Reading minds. Predicting the future. Growing trees. Dropping rocks on swordsmen.

Jon wondered if he, too, could use a little stick like that.

It seemed better than a sword.

XX

Harry returned from seeing his prisoners situated. Clegane got plenty cooperative after Harry levitated him from the ground into his cell. They were his first ones, but surely not his last. Not with everyone headed for Harrenhal to make a better profit during wartime.

He would pay for the day he'd spent growing trees and chatting with two of his wards. So wide eyed. So impressed by the smallest kinds of magic. Harry had been like that a long time ago.

Now it was like breathing or sleeping, just a normal function of his body.

He tried to get his supper. He had to promise the rest of his time that evening. His people wanted his attention. So he gave it to those who stored his food and paid everyone attached to the castle and received the mail from abroad. He cautioned all of them that he had his own obligations the next day, ledgers and letters and such. He would not be disturbed.

Early the next morning, Harry broke his fast quickly and then barred the door to his suite of rooms with magic. He disappeared from Harrenhal via apparition. He had long awaited the day when he was strong enough to apparate a great distance. Popping to and from the Isle of Faces was a simple matter. What he intended this day was not, especially if his best guesses were wrong about what he'd find beyond the Wall.

He popped into a place up in the North. He had a quick look around and verified that no one had seen anything. Another pop and he was beyond the Wall.

The magic here. It almost overwhelmed him. It was like the crashing of an ocean's wave here compared to the little trickle of a dying stream down below. Why was there so much magic here - and so little elsewhere?

He paused and tried to separate out the strands. Some of it felt like wildness, an animagus's power, and another portion felt like ice - and death. The rest...he could feel it from everywhere. It was amazing.

But he had a list of things to do. He thought it was going to be hard to find the weirwood trees he needed. Wrong.

He found more than he could handle. He set to taking a few branches from every tree, along with generating a map of where he'd found them. He would need to come back in the future.

The cuttings he had so far came from the few godswoods, the real ones, that existed in the north. Harry had traveled up there to collect Jon Snow and Orvis Snow and several others. Every trip, he collected more cuttings. He could make himself invisible, after all.

Now, with so many more trees, Harry could plant thousands of cuttings. He wouldn't have to ration them out, planning how many he could spare here or there. This was a feast of weirwood cuttings, no longer a famine.

He needed as many as he could get.

His walls helped to make an area that was safe for weirwood trees, safe for magic. He had built three rings of it, enough to encircle the entire Gods Eye lake and more. But it wasn't enough by far. Harry needed more magic to sustain more walls.

The trees, the weirwoods, strengthened the magic near to Harrenhal. So that meant Harry could move between places of magic. But other places, like Riverrun or even Winterfell, they felt like they were draining him.

Harry's second goal was investigating the possibility of long-distance apparition. Intercontinental. He needed to be in a very magical place if he was going to attempt a transit to a different continent. He thought he could do it from up here.

First to Braavos. Then further east. There was fire magic far away, dragons perhaps. And other kinds of fire magic that he did not yet understand.

Harry had it in his mind to visit all the cities mixed up with magic. Qarth. Asshai. But it was going to take time and planning. He needed a way to bring more magic with him. Once he left the old magic north of the wall...he might not have enough to get back.

With the war breaking out here, he couldn't afford the years to sail to the various places he wanted to go.

So he wanted to prepare to travel, but he needed to be sure he could get back if he landed in a place that felt as magically dead as King's Landing, where Harry had only spent a few hours before feeling physically ill.

How to be sure? How could Harry store magic and replenish himself if he needed it? His old world had had pepper-up, which gave body energy, not magical energy. But he didn't remember a single potion designed to replenish magic.

He might just have to invent the damned thing.

That was the third item on his list - magical he could port with him and use to get back if he needed - perhaps a potion, perhaps a portkey that he could configure to work in this very strange world. He'd have to save the possibilities for a later time.

Now Harry wanted cuttings from more of the weirwood trees, the strongest ones he could find.

He spent several hours marking his rough map and putting the cut, thin branches into a bag he'd enchanted for the purpose when he came across something very strange.

A wolf. A large wolf. It had stopped and was watching him with a curious look. It wasn't growling. It wasn't closing with Harry or backing away. It stood and watched, which struck Harry as very unwolflike behavior.

Harry could feel magic in the beast.

Not an animagus, but some other kind of magic. Were these fabled direwolves magical creatures then? Harry had never thought to wonder.

Harry stared back at the wolf.

It was an unnatural stillness between them.

Then Harry had a thought. He had heard children's stories told and retold about wargs.

Was this wolf not a wolf, but a person scouting using a wolf's body? Harry had heard of people using something called a shadowcat, but some stories did use wolves or birds, too.

"I will not harm you," Harry said.

That broke the stillness.

The wolf cocked its head before it turned and loped off.

Harry went back to his cuttings, still puzzled. He was about to leave when a small woman walked over to where the wolf had been. The wolf was now at her side.

"Why are you cutting the weirwood?" she asked. Her voice was soft, like the first flakes of a winter storm.

Of course, Harry was mindful that here the first flakes could portend a blizzard.

"I will plant them and grow more of the weirwoods."

The woman got an astonished look on her face. She had obviously never heard of the practice. "Why?"

What to say? 'I want to make my magic stronger so I can return to where I came?' - no. "Because they're beautiful."

She heard the joking lie and cursed at him.

Harry just shrugged it off.

"What's your name?" she demanded. She really did have some fury to her, especially when she stood in front of her wolf.

"I'm Harry Whent."

"Whent? Is that some lord's name?"

"I am lord of Harrenhal, in the south."

Now she wasn't just angry, she was suspicious. "What's a lord doing up here?"

He gestured to the trees.

The woman didn't understand. "You said you wouldn't hurt me. You know, you couldn't hurt me. Not with Gymma to watch over me."

Harry took that to be the name of the wolf.

"I wanted to set your mind at ease," Harry said.

"You recognized the wolf. You recognized a person was watching you?"

"I guessed.

"Right."

"What's your name?" Harry asked.

"Alyse."

"Well, Alyse and Gymma, it was good to meet you. I'll be moving along now."

She looked around, maybe for a horse or another person. One person moving through this - she seemed to examine Harry for signs of instability. "Where?"

"Well, to supper, I guess."

"At your castle far in the south?" She laughed.

"Well, yes."

"I don't believe it."

So Harry proved her wrong. It was a bit rude to just pop away, but he had announced his intentions. Maybe if he ever ran into her again, she might believe him a little.

Or, more likely, not.

Two hops and he was back in the Lord's Tower at Harrenhal.

"I'll have to find her again. She seems to know what's she's doing as a warg." Learning some unfamiliar magic had never done Harry wrong.

Harry put his weirwood cuttings into his workroom before he unbarred his door, collected the mail from the table in front of his suite of rooms, and put in a request for dinner. His servant this evening was a young lad named Neame. He didn't ask why Harry looked so cold. A sharp boy, he obviously noticed, but he had a brain in his head.

Harry walked back into his suit and started opening letters.

Such a mess. He read all the details: Stark against Lannister, Martell scheming against...well, everyone, the Tyrells sucking up to whoever seemed most likely to prosper.

None of it mattered to him, except as details he needed to know so he could follow future conversations.

He did not often dine alone at his little work table, but that night he did.

"Thank you, Neame."

"Yes, Lord Whent."

He ate and pondered.

His major work continued, figuring out why he was here - and who had drug him to this place. Increasing the magic of the place made it easier for Harry to do the things he needed. It just so happened to make the Riverlands considerably more fertile. He was glad that his selfishness, this time, would help many others.

He pulled out paper and put down more of his ideas on how the magic of this place worked. First off, it was strong in places, but almost absent in others. That was very strange for Harry, coming from a place where there was high background magic almost everywhere that jumped to massive in a few places, like Hogwarts.

The styles of magic still practiced here were a bit different. Divination was strong here, even Harry was often a waking seer in this place, assuming he was close to a place of magic, like the Isle of Faces. Necromancy was strong, he'd felt the lingering traces of it up north. Illusion magic, too, he'd sniffed.

Harry scribbled down the list of spells he still couldn't do. It was shockingly long. He'd slowly reworked his ability to do most Charms and even major transfiguration, as he used to repair Harrenhal. Conjuration remained mostly beyond him. Attacking another person with magic cost devastating amounts, so much that Harry refrained from testing it fully.

What he did that day with the Clegane raiders was the extent of what he felt comfortable using. Enchanting things to bind others. Using magic to lift things - and then canceling those spells to make them fall.

He could also have used compulsions, in small amounts, not like when he'd overdosed on compulsion magic to ensure Lady Whent helped in his quest to own a castle so near to the Isle of Faces.

He wondered how many people in the North had magic. Alyse, of course. He had found few, almost none, in the south. Harry wondered why - and suspected he wouldn't like the answer.

His plan remained. Plant more trees, hope for weirwoods, rare that they were. He had now protected Harrenhal with the first wall, the growing crop lands with the second, and all of the territory assigned to Harrenhal, including the Gods Eye lake, with the third. He drew up the fourth. Yes, he'd be taking land from other lords - but it would be land that now wouldn't fall under blade and fire and war.

Harry needed more magic if he was going to get anywhere. Right now, he could barely defend his castle because there was so little magic left in this part of the world. Put him above the Wall, sure. Here? No, he was going to have to work at it.

He would slowly channel what magics he could spare into the preparation for raising the fourth wall. When he had enough, it was the work of a moment to raise it, all at once, overnight.

Then he would need a way to keep it fed. That was why he shored up the weak northern sections of the third ring wall by planting weirwoods close to them. The third wall passed near to Gods Eye and the Isle of Faces. That was plenty of power for the southern portion of the wall. The northern portion he'd had to supplement.

All of the fourth wall would need weirwoods. What a tremendous undertaking. Bringing back magic was not a simple matter, not even for one with Harry's experience. It was exhausting.

He, for a moment, considered relocating himself above the wall. The magic up there was abundant and clean, save for that faint whiff of necromancy. He could craft himself a castle from the local stone in a few days. Then he remembered all that snow.

Snow ten times deeper than anything he'd experienced at Hogwarts when he was a student or a teacher.

No.

A little hard work wouldn't kill him, while twenty feet of snow might even overwhelm a wizard.

He was staying in Harrenhal.

He could visit the far north. It was no longer all that hard to do.

XX

Maester Leatins walked into the council room that Lord Whent had not often used since he took over Harrenhal. The Maester had been directed here by a brief note. Good, he was ready for a closer relationship with the young lord. He needed advice and Maester Leatins was ready to give it.

The Septon and several Septas were next into the room. Then several others, visiting merchants who never quite departed, filled the compact room to its capacity. Last, it seemed, was one of the cooks from the kitchen.

What a motley assemblage.

Lord Whent walked into the room, alone. He still disdained a guard, even though his castle was filled with strangers and there was raiding happening throughout the Riverlands. What a young man with a young man's lack of worries.

Maester Leatins was not young. Even when he had been young, he hadn't felt it. Being at the Citadel had that effect.

He looked at Lord Whent and wondered about him. He always looked and always wondered. Maester Leatins wasn't just an ordinary Maester given to a castle. He was, in fact, an Archmaester who had not yet taken his seat at Conclave. This last field task for him was too important to send a different man. For the last Maester of Harrenhal had been an old man when he passed on. But his reports to Old Town had been unnerving.

The rebuilding of Harrenhal had been a surprise, first a welcome one, then not so much to the Conclave.

The how of the situation... That no one could answer.

The whispers in Old Town? Magic, magic was afoot at Harrenhal again. The ghosts were gone, at least no one reported them. But there was a more sinister kind of magic at Harrenhal. The kind that could rebuild destroyed things.

So Maester Leatins came to Harrenhal as its Maester, for a time. He had special orders to abandon the post within two years, pleading a recall to Old Town for some reason or other. It was a technical breach of protocol as a Maester was supposed to be assigned to a castle for life. But Maester Leatins was too valuable to remain here for life. He specialized in a discipline not rewarded with a colored link for his chain. He was a spy - and also a master of laws - but a gifted spy first.

He had organized the networks of information sharing across Westeros and Essos and beyond for the Conclave.

The Spider in King's Landing thought he had a network, but it paled to the depths of the one Maester Leatins controlled.

It was also his choice whom he shared the information with. For example, he shared some, but not all, with the Grand Maester. That man spent too little time in Old Town. He might be their nominal leader, but he no longer had the trust of the Conclave. It had been many, many years since he came out on top in the election. All his old friends were dead. The new generation was just waiting for Pycelle to die.

Now, Maester Leatins was interested about the topic of the meeting and what he might learn today. He had yet to see any evidence of magic, but he was looking for it. It was uncomfortable to work for this lord because he seemed to use his wards as his chief confidants, a pack of bastards he'd gathered from the North and the Riverlands. They had no special love for Maester Leatins because Lord Whent had no love for him.

The Lord got settled at the front in an ancient chair. "Everyone's here. No sense drawing out many words. I think we can agree that war is upon the Riverlands," Lord Whent said.

Maester Leatins surveyed the group again. Why would this gathering need to know that? A cook? To get ready to cook hardier fare? A Septon? Those merchants...

"I must do more to protect Harrenhal now. I hope you understand."

No one disagreed.

"I see you looking around, wondering. Why are these people in this room with me?" Lord Whent asked.

"Yes," Maester Leatins said.

"You all share something in common, unfortunately. I have observed all of you for some time - and now it is the moment for you to understand what I will accept and what I forbid. You are the foreign spies..."

"Spies!" exclaimed more than one person, some with genuine indignation.

Maester Leatins said nothing.

Whent continued. "...emplaced in Harrenhal. I decided to talk to all of you at once."

The Septon stood. "I am no spy, my Lord."

Lord Whent opened a drawer in a table. He pulled out a tall stack of parchments. He thumbed through them until he pulled up some of them and waved them at the Septon.

"You write to others of the Faith. You write to the High Septon. You pass out the doings of Harrenhal upon any request. I call that a spy - of which you and the Septas are guilty."

The Septon sat down again.

He offered no defense.

Maester Leatins wondered exactly what was written on those sheets. The Septon was reasonably good at gathering information. Maester Leatins saw, at third hand, some of what he gathered. So how did Lord Whent come to hold it in his hand?

Did this Whent employ a spy that Maester Leatins had never detected?

He began puzzling over that while Lord Whent continued around the room, explaining affiliations, breaking many of the secrets the people in the room tried to maintain.

The cook reported information to anyone who paid him. Who roomed where. Who slept with whom. Who favored which foods and when, all the best nuggets of lore for a poisoner, for instance.

The merchants worked for several guilds, paying for some goods in information rather than coin, and also collecting additional payments from the Lannisters and Tyrells.

One Septa reported to Varys in King's Landing. Another reported to the Lannisters in addition to her own order.

"Last, our line to Old Town." Lord Whent nodded to Maester Leatins.

"The way you speak, it sounds like you intend to expel us," Maester Leatins said. Expel - or worse. "All of us. Merchants and cooks, fine. But all castles have Septs. All castles have a Maester."

Maester Leatins needed to temper the fire of this wreckage fast.

"All Maesters spy so it's fine?" Lord Whent asked.

The childish question didn't deserve an answer - save for the fact that the lord of this castle made the argument. "All Maesters make reports back to the Citadel, yes."

It wasn't the right answer, even if it was true.

"I will expel all of you," Lord Whent said. "Unless you give me firm promises to amend your behavior."

"What does amend mean? Specifically?" one of the Septas asked.

"No reports out. I'll be watching. I'll be checking. I have my agents to keep all of you honest."

The Septa did not volunteer any amendments.

"You cannot have a Sept without a Septon." Of course that came from the Septon. "You cannot expel me. There would be no replacement. There would be no Sept. You would have a riot on your hands."

"If I expel you, there will be no replacement?" Lord Whent asked.

"Correct. I promise you."

"Who is the most devout of your congregation?"

Maester Leatins thought the question clever.

The Septon did not. "You cannot replace me with a lay person. Impossible."

"So you have no one you would consider devout enough."

"It is not your role to decide who presides in the Sept."

Maester Leatins thought this was a poor line of argument for the Sept to make.

"Then I will agree to the terms you outlined. I expel you and you send no new spies in your place."

"But..."

He had been outthought. The man might be decent at figuring a few secrets, but he was still a basic idiot.

"You just admitted you did a poor job stoking the devotion of those who use your Sept. Perhaps no one will miss you."

"A castle without a Sept? The Seven will still your heart," the more devout of the two Septas said.

The lord shrugged. He did not fear such remote possibilities.

"If you expel the Septon...," Maester Leatins began.

"I will. And you, too, Maester Spy."

"...you will set the Citadel against you."

"They are already against me. The Seven are against me, too. Sending trained spies like all of you. Septon Bumars wasn't selected for his piety. Maester Leatins, you were not selected to give wise counsel. I have watched you since you arrived. You're canny, but not that cautious. The only good thing I can say about you, at least you're not a master of poisons. I know what you are and what you do. I prefer you do it somewhere else if you're working for someone else."

"You have no proof," Maester Leatins said.

Lord Whent rifled through his papers again. Then he bent his head and began to read one of them to himself. He looked up. Instead of reading it aloud, the man summarized:

"You have spent months attempting to learn how we constructed the chilling device for our perishable stores, to steal the idea for the Citadel and reproduce it. You have spoken with everyone who was involved in the construction. You've sent what little you know back to Old Town. I have my own correspondents..."

"I send no ravens for you."

Ah, Maester Leatins had said the wrong thing. The Order of Maesters provided ravens so that they could speed communications, true, but they did it so they could tell who was writing to whom.

Maester Leatins had just confirmed to a very canny person something that he shouldn't have.

Lord Whent may have understood or not. He pushed through the faux pas. "You think I would trust my letters to a known spy? No."

That explained much, Maester Leatins realized. He wasn't anonymous as he'd thought. Someone at the Citadel had tipped Lord Whent off... But who - and for what reason?

Gold?

A promise of a position later?

What?

To hold the chain and then stand against the Order, it meant...it meant exile.

"I would have told you about the chilling tower, if you'd asked," Lord Whent said. "It's not that difficult at all, assuming you have the right conditions. In temperate months, we move cool water down through the walls of the food storage tower like you'd move water using a screw and a mill."

"There is no river to power it - or waterfall."

"There is. The river is below ground. The people at Harrenhal have known of it for many years. When I was planning how we might revitalize this terrifying old pile, I spoke with everyone I could until I also knew its many secrets. I plan to power more things with that water, too. Things you will never see."

Maester Leatins had almost believed the tower was powered with magic. But, no, of course, that was impossible. Still, he would tell the Order what he knew. Not that it was much.

A known spy wasn't useful for much. Grumbling and grousing at most.

"I will take my leave," Maester Leatins said. "I do not care to listen to accusations."

"If you will not swear to me, then you may go."

The room emptied.

The lord had come into the room alone, but he had guards posted outside. Some followed Maester Leatins to his chambers, but prevented him from taking much, other than his clothes. The books, the herbs. None of it. Some of his papers he got to take. None of the gold or silver in the room.

They thought him a thief as well as a spy.

Lord Whent had been thorough about things, but he had made a powerful enemy. The Citadel, of course, would resent this snub, but Archmaester Leatins felt it in particular. Now he was freed to take up his office. He could help in the war with advice so long as it meant destruction for Lord Whent.

When the Archmaester left Harrenhal for the last time, it was on a gifted palfrey in the company of disgruntled religious men and women, plus their assistants. The merchant-spies were already gone.

No one knew what had happened to the cook.

Maester Leatins chatted for days with his colleague in espionage, trading notes on what they'd observed.

He also made immediate plans to begin rooting out whatever spies existed within the Citadel.

One other thing continued to bother him. He wondered about the staginess of that meeting.

Why drag in spies and then shove them out after telling them what you knew or suspected?

If Maester Leatins had been in charge, why, he might just have executed the spies.

He was glad that Whent hadn't, of course. But...what was the purpose of that meeting? The Archmaester now carried back more information than he had before...but what if some of it wasn't true?

That lord was cleverer than he looked.

The Archmaester would have to go over and over what he thought he knew. Some of it was obviously not true.

Still, he'd assume there were spies working for Whent in Old Town or the Citadel. Rooting them out... A big, successful effort at that - well, it might just clear his way to becoming the next Grand Maester. Perish the thought. He would turn abject failure into profit.

He would be in a better position to erase this embarrassment away, starting with Lord Whent.

XX

Lord Hoster Tully, who was at the head of a considerable armed force, was not healthy, not really fit to be out. But the world was unsettled. The King was dead. Ned Stark was dead because of the King's successor. The Kingdoms were about to start burning as before when another King had murdered another Lord Stark. That same event had set off the last really bad times. This new set of deaths and killings would unsettle the uneasy peace, if one could have peace living next to the greedy eyes of Lannisters.

Lord Tully and his force rode up to some wall that kept him from completing the journey to Harrenhal. "What in the name of the Seven is this thing?" he asked.

No one among his force knew.

"Get the gate, one of you."

Several men from his force complied. He had pulled men from among his sworn men to repel the Lannister invaders, then come to hear that one of his own lords had captured the leaders of that force.

Hoster did not enjoy being embarrassed in front of his lords, least of all by another one of his own lords.

His men moved forward...and then stopped moving at all about a dozen paces from the gate.

"Are you stuck, boys?" he joked.

"My lord, I think we are."

If he wasn't fighting Lannisters, he was fighting idiocy in his own ranks. How in the blazes were these men stuck?

This place...

Hoster hated Harrenhal, absolutely hated it.

He hadn't come to Harrenhal since the new Whent, the legitimized bastard, took over. Old Lady Whent had been plenty enough, since her name should have been Whine rather than Whent.

He directed another crew of men to help.

Now he had two groups of people stuck.

What bedevilment was this?

It was a simple mission - gather an army. The real fighting was to come soon. The North was wholly unsettled. The Riverlands had been ransacked by the Lannisters. The Vale might even throw in - as it was now without a lord and people were whispering murder. Two Hands of the King dead. The King dead. It made for good stories, if nothing else. Got the blood up.

Hoster needn't have come. He could have sent a raven for men.

To be honest, he was here because he wanted to clap eyes on a person who could put the Mountain That Rides into a cell. He wanted the Mountain put down - or exchanged with the Lannisters if they held someone important to him.

He also needed more men.

The Lannisters would surely step up the tempo now that the Clegane was behind iron bars.

Hoster wondered at the strange gated wall he saw in front of him. His men were still stopped in front of it.

"Open the gate," Hoster demanded.

There was no answer from the other side.

They put a gate in the wall and had no one to operate it? What was the purpose of a wall like this without men to guard it?

More of his men surged forward and then stopped, like they were so many flies stuck in a honeyed syrup that had spilled on the floor. They were also stuck. The war hadn't started yet and Hoster was already defeated.

"Looking for something," a voice inquired.

"What?"

There was one man standing on top of the wall. Hoster looked at him.

"You seem lost," the little shit said.

"Bring us into Harrenhal," Hoster said.

"We can talk just fine here."

"Open the damned gate, boy."

"We do not suffer armies to march near Harrenhal."

"Some courtesy." He grumbled. "I am Hoster Tully, Lord of the Riverlands. Bring Lord Whent to me, now."

"I am Lord Whent."

No. Impossible.

"You look about five and ten. Not even a hair on your face."

"I'm older than I look."

That didn't help Hoster one bit. "Get down here and open that gate. I am your Lord."

The smiling shit didn't move.

"Actually, I understand you opposed my suit after you learned I'd been legitimized. I've only sworn to Robert Baratheon. He is, no, he was my liege lord. I have no other. And will swear to no other."

Hoster flushed at the reminder of this mistake. Yes, he could be petty. Yes, he had never summoned Whent and sworn him.

"You had forgotten all about us until now, save to send my stepmother a letter and ship us another inconvenient young man. Hiding your bastards with Lord Bastard. What can I do for you, Lord Tully?"

"Open the gate. Release my men from whatever this trap is. We'll discuss your lordship inside your keep."

"No," the shit said.

"No?"

"If King Robert were still alive, he could have mediated this, summoned us to King's Landing. I have no liege lord now. Not one as craven and foresworn as you."

This brash shit wore no armor, carried no weapons, and stood on a not very tall wall. He was awfully confident to speak as he did. He must have archers hidden nearby to feel this confident. Where had all the damned trees come from?

"I don't have time to fight my allies. We have common enemies, you recognize that?" Hoster asked.

"What I recognize is that you are the worst possible ally for someone to have. Well, you or maybe Walder Frey."

"What?"

That was an insult that demanded blood. Walder Frey...

"The last time your friends desperately needed your help, you made sure you got fine matches for your two daughters before you'd hand over your army. Now Lysa is a widow and Catelyn has lit the fuse on this war. I'd say stupidity infests your line."

Hoster's brother, the Blackfish, began to laugh.

Host was ready to start yelling. But yelling never calmed things down. Never.

Well, if yelling wouldn't work. He'd have to go for flattery? Apologies? Something.

"I apologize for any slights I may have given you," Hoster said because this boy-lord was as peevish as... as Walder Frey.

"What do you want?" the Whent asked.

"The Riverlands need men."

"A war with steel won't solve your problem."

"I can cut off a head every day until I solve it."

Whent shook his head. He sighed. "I asked for volunteers among my men as soon as I heard you were coming."

"How much notice did you have?" Hoster asked.

"Four days."

This man-child was a burgeoning spider in his own right. Spies everywhere to keep him informed. Four days of notice and still he was this rude.

"How many?" Hoster demanded.

"Four hundred men-at-arms. Fifteen knights."

For a huge structure like Harrenhal, it was nothing. Still, Hoster would take them.

"You, too. You must ride with us."

Hoster would make some lessons very clear to this very young lord.

"I will not. I am lord of Harrenhal. I will protect it."

"There is no protection from Lannisters behind castle walls."

The Whent looked down at the Tully men still stuck in front of the wall's gate. Hoster had no idea how this bastard lord had done that.

Then, suddenly, they were freed.

The gate opened outward, forcing the men to scramble.

Behind the open gate? The promised men were there, ready. Listening to Tully get talked down to by a nothing.

They had the good grace not to show that they were listening.

"About Ser Gregor...," Hoster said.

"He threatened my people and tried to burn our crops..."

"I want the Mountain." He might just need to do a deal with Tywin Lannister.

"Do you have a prison cell that can hold him?" the Whent asked.

"I don't intend to hold him."

Either death for him or use in a ransoming.

"He deserves a King's justice," the bastard lord said. "If King Robert had demanded him, I would have carted him to King's Landing."

Lord Hoster Tully didn't like that. He didn't like any of this. But Hoster had come begging and he got the beggar's treatment. He had done just about the same when Robert Baratheon, Jon Arryn, and Ned Stark had come begging. This was one of the few times Hoster had felt this. He didn't like it. He didn't like this bastard Whent.

He knew the Lannisters were the immediate threat. But he wouldn't forget this. He wouldn't let his son, Edmure, forget it either.

"If you keep Clegane here, you'll just draw more Lannister forces to you."

"I understand that."

"You think this little wall will keep them out?"

"I think Harrenhal will keep them out. Unless you think that the Lannisters have acquired some dragons?"

Dragons and Harrenhal had a long history, a deadly one. "No. No dragons."

"Then I am sorry that the people I protect will be safe while many others will not. I may try to find others to bring in and protect. Do you wish the protection of Harrenhal?"

Hoster's men laughed long before he did. This was a horrible insult, for a lord to hide behind walls while there was a war ongoing.

"No," Hoster said without elaboration.

"Then I wish you a safe journey and dry roads. My men have agreed to serve for six months and then they will return. Whichever of them you haven't managed to misuse and wound."

"You'd let me take them? When you have such a low opinion of me?"

"I would let them choose. They are young and eager and nothing I say will change the temperature of their blood. Perhaps war will, for the lucky, the survivors."

The man disappeared off the wall.

Hoster couldn't have just seen that... Right?

XX

Gymma whined outside the tent. "Girl, what is it?"

Alyse went outside.

She looked back at her brother and sister. "Finish your soup. I'll see what's what."

"Aye," Alyse's sister said.

Gymma darted off into the trees.

Alyse had never seen her direwolf act like this. Excited, but not fearful.

What was out there?

It was snowing, for Winter's sake.

Gymma wanted to play.

Of all the times...

"Gymma. Gymma. When I catch you, I'm..."

Well, nothing.

Gymma was taller than Alyse. Gymma was bigger than the tent that three people lived in. A good one, left behind by some crows, but still smaller than a growing direwolf.

"Gymma?"

Alyse ran in the snow.

Her direwolf could take care of herself. She could - and did - eat anything that might mean her harm.

There.

Near the weirwood.

Her direwolf.

And that southern lord.

He was back.

He was cutting more fine branches off the tree.

He'd lied the last time about why he was doing it. Maybe he was planting them, that might have been true. But he was probably selling them or something.

Southern lord and a castle.

Alyse didn't believe it.

He could do some magic, aye.

"Gymma?" Alyse asked.

"She apparently likes me," the lord said.

"Well, I don't. Runs out here in the snow. It could be two feet by tomorrow."

"Well, I'll move along soon."

"Back to your castle?"

"Not so soon, no. I have more cuttings to collect."

Alyse stared at him, but brushed the snow off her shoulders. "How do you disappear like you do?"

"How do you look out from the eyes of Gymma?"

"I know how I do that. But how do you do your thing?"

The lord paused in his work.

"Do you want to know? Or do you want to try for yourself?"

Alyse nodded, which wasn't an answer, she knew.

The lord handed her cutting. "Put a bit of your blood on it."

"My blood."

"Blood wands aren't great. But out here, in the middle of a blizzard, it's the best I can do."

She slashed her thumb on a sharp bit of bark and put her blood all up and down the branch.

"Now, hold it straight out, like this." He made a gesture holding another cutting.

She copied him.

"Now say..."

She couldn't make out the word.

"What language is that?" she asked.

He sounded it out for her. Lu - Moss.

It didn't mean a thing to her.

"Try again."

She did. Nothing.

"Again."

Nothing.

"Again."

There. A brief speck of light. She dropped the bloody weirwood branch.

"Was it supposed to do that? Light, at the end."

"Congratulations. Alyse, you're a witch."

The lord seemed to find this amusing.

"Witch?"

"A warg and a witch."

He walked forward and Gymma didn't growl. He picked up the cutting and tapped it. It began to burn while there was snow everywhere.

"Don't leave things out with your blood on them. Very bad idea."

"Why did you destroy it?"

"It wasn't a proper wand. If you want to learn magic, we'll have to make you a decent wand."

"Learn...magic?"

The lord nodded. "I hadn't realized it until just now, but when I find magical people I guess I have an obligation to help them."

"Why?"

"I want magic back in my lands. That means more than just one user of magic - and more than just one type of magic."

She thought he was lying to her again.

"Am I to be a court fool? A magician, a fortune teller?" she demanded.

He shook his head, but was quiet a while. "You are to learn magic and help me find others who can. It's your choice."

"Why didn't you ask me?"

"What?"

"You made me fumble around. You should have offered it."

He shrugged. "I haven't met many magical folks so far," the lord said. "It didn't occur to me that you'd be curious."

She thought that statement was true. It really hadn't occurred to him that he had something very special. He probably left jealous people everywhere he went.

"I must think about it. Find me later."

"How much later?" he asked with a smile.

"Later."

He shook his head, then. It was no longer just a game to him. "War is ravaging near my lands. Soon it will come up here, too."

"You sound like Mance Rayder. I've told his people no."

"It will sweep down from further North. That is why your Mance Rayder is trying to get south."

"I heard the story."

"I guess that's all. I can teach you something if you'd like to know it. Perhaps you can help others after you learn some magic. So many choices you have."

"I will not fight in a southern war."

"I'm trying to stay out of it, too. I'll return 'later' and see if you'll accept my offer."

"It's later," she said.

He seemed to regret making the offer. "It is. Do you want to see a great castle in the south?"

"I do. I might hate it. But I do."

"Do you have any other belongings?" the lord asked.

"None you lack down south, I expect."

"Any family you need to bring with you?"

"You'd allow it?"

"I would," the strange wizard said.

"My brother is old enough to take care of my sister, but I'd prefer to have them with me. I watch out for them. Well, Gymma and I do."

"They can come."

"Gymma, too?"

"Yes," the lord said.

She had a pang of fear. She needed to be completely honest. "They can't do what I can. I don't think."

"They can still come."

She felt relief, then unease. "What would they do?"

"It's a big castle. We have many things that need doing."

"They won't kneel."

The wizard just nodded. "I don't much like it myself."

With that, she had a teacher of magic and perhaps a new home. Simple, huh? She did not expect things to remain simple for long.

"Walk with me. Our tent is over that hill," Alyse said. "We should go before the snow gets worse."

"I agree."

XX

Arya, or Arry, had joined up with a convoy heading north to the wall taking prisoners to join the Night's Watch. Then it all went to hell.

She could smell death.

She would never forget what it looked like.

Yoren was dead along with so many others. The Lannister men were still tromping about looking for those who got away.

Before that, she had seen her father murdered on the order of Joffrey the Shit.

Syrio, her teacher, was dead.

She should never have come south.

These Lannisters... They were joking, mocking. She could still see that little blond monster having her father killed...

Lannisters...she swore, she swore on everything she knew, that she would pay them all back.

Then, the joking ended. The clearing was silent. Everyone was just frozen, including Gendry and Hot Pie and the others.

Aside from one man, who didn't even wear armor. He stepped lightly, but she could hear him moving. She could see him from her hiding spot.

He was walking toward her, walking through what had been a confused melee.

"I will not hurt you," the man said.

She huddled back next to a stump and said nothing.

The man walked closer. His hands were up and empty. He had no weapon...but how had he done all this, frozen everyone?

"What are you?" Arya asked.

"That is the right question."

"How did you do...do all of this?"

"Stand up, young Stark."

The shocked her.

She looked like a boy. A dirty, stupid boy. How did this...person...know who she was?

"Were you looking for me? I'm not going back to King's Landing."

The stranger smiled. "My name is Lord Whent, Arya. Did your father ever talk about me?"

Her face fixed. "No."

"I live close to this place, here in the Riverlands, which is where your mother's father, Lord Tully, lives. I can protect you at Harrenhal."

Harrenhal?

Wasn't that where Jon Snow was?

It didn't matter. She didn't want to go to Harrenhal.

"I need to get North to Winterfell..."

"The North isn't exactly a safe place now." The stranger sounded upset about that.

"My family's allies are there."

"Have you kept up on the stories of what's happening?"

"Not much."

"I would be careful if I had allies like your family does."

Fury rose inside her. "I don't believe you."

"Do you like Roose Bolton? You've met him, I'm sure."

"No. I don't like him."

"He's a man of ambition. If your brother Robb were ten years older, you'd be okay. But Robb is young and Roose is dangerous. Walder Frey is dangerous. The Karstarks are dangerous right now. Robb does not have the reputation your father did in his prime."

Arya didn't want to hear any of that. "I have to get back."

"Well, I offer you the safety of my castle. You can send a raven to your family, ask for advice."

Arya had become quite an expert on people in the small numbers of years she had been alive. Good people. Bad people. Evil people, like Joffrey or the Hound.

This stranger, Lord Whent, was powerful, but he was honest, at least to her ear and her eye.

He told her a few things she already knew. Roose Bolton... She did not feel her brother Robb was safe with allies like him. She did not think she would be safe traveling north without the Night's Watch convoy.

"Is Jon Snow still at Harrenhal?"

"Jon... Right, he is from Winterfell."

"He's a Stark," Arya shouted.

"I understand. Yes, he is still training at Harrenhal. I managed to keep him from riding off to war with Lord Tully."

Arya felt a little safer now. It still wasn't much. But if she got to see Jon. He might know what to do.

"I can leave whenever I want?" Arya asked.

"Yes. Preferably in the company of an army. But, yes, you may leave if you feel you need to."

She looked around. "Can Gendry come with me?"

"Who is Gendry?"

Arya pointed out all of her friends, Gendry included. They were as frozen as the Lannister bannermen.

"Yes," Whent said. "I seem to be taking in everyone these days. We can find something for all of them to do."

Arya went with him. All of her friends did, but nothing soothed her wrath. Jon helped some when she spoke with him at the castle. Practicing with Needle helped some. Watching Genry at the castle forge helped.

Then she decided she needed to write a letter. It was strange this castle. They had ravens, but no Maester.

Her letter said this:

Dear Mother and Robb,

I am safe, I promise. I got out of King's Landing after the Lannisters tried to capture all of us. Father died there and they still have Sansa, but they failed to capture me.

How did I manage to leave? Me, the youngest. Nothing I did saved me. In fact, some of our few remaining guards and my sword master died to allow me to escape from the Red Keep when the soldiers came for me.

I was still in King's Landing when Joffrey had father killed. I dressed as a boy and rode north with a some criminals being sent to the Wall before we were attacked by Lannister bannermen. I was rescued by Lord Whent. I am at Harrenhal now.

When the war settles, if it ever does, I want to come back to Winterfell. For now, I know traveling is too dangerous. I have several sword masters here to teach me and no Septas to nag me. I promise to practice my reading, though. There is a great library here. Plus, no one can breach these walls, not even Joffrey's soldiers.

Try to get Sansa back from the monsters in the Red Keep.

Kill as many Lannisters as you can, but save Ilyn Payne for me. I will learn how to use my little sword, Needle, so that I can repay him for the lesson he taught me. Jon Snow is here and is helping me. I wish my dancing teacher, Syrio Forel, were here, too. He taught me how to use my sword. He was the first sword of Braavos and he died to keep me from being captured.

Keep Bran and Rickon safe. Please send me a raven to let me know you are safe. I will see you very soon.

My love,

Arya Stark

XX

Lord Bolton had been in the North, but was now in the Riverlands. The message from the idiotic young Lord Stark was confused, to the say the best. Robb Stark, Roose's liege lord for now, had his ideas and had given particular orders.

Roose needed to take Harrenhal, if only to deny it to the Lannisters.

The problem was there was an attainted lord still occupying the place. Whent, the bastard Whent. Robert might have signed a paper saying he wasn't a bastard...but Robert was dead now.

Roose would play loyal for now, but he had his own ideas. It wouldn't be all that long before Robb wouldn't be able to have a say at all. Dead men had a difficult time speaking.

Roose tried to remember the layout of Harrenhal. It had been some years since he'd ventured this way. No matter, even if it was huge. He'd put the place to the sword, all the way down to the cooks.

You didn't want to settle into a place only to find out that some sod had poisoned your evening meal. No, when Roose Bolton did something, he did it all the way to the end.

For example, Roose had dug through his voluminous memory for rumors of this place before he'd started on his journey. Tully, the fool, had once bragged to Robb about what little he had observed of it. He had taken most of its fighting force to join his own.

Roose had filed all the details away, as he tucked everything else away: information, slights, plans, opportunities, moments for vengeance.

Now it was time to make use of his knowledge.

Roose slowed and then stopped his force. They had come to one of these fortification. Unmanned. They wouldn't even provide a notification or set off a warning. Worthless.

Roose turned his head and began issuing his orders. "Armor off, swords off. Climb that little wall."

It was a full infiltration Roose had planned.

"Use stones as weapons until you can steal a blade from the other side. They may not have swords, but we know they grow food. Take a blade off a plow if you have to, make a kind of axe with it. Don't forget about the other wall, closer in. When King Robert went through to Harrenhal, he said there were two walls like this. I can't imagine there would be more now."

His men were unhappy to leave their swords here as they ventured into danger over there. Tough.

"The castle has been largely stripped of its fighting men by Hoster Tully. Good for us. Bad for those remaining in the old ruins. Put them all to the blade, men. Then find the plans for these walls...and how to turn them off. We will be waiting at the section of the wall near Grainery Creek. There's a gate there for the use of the local farmers, I suspect."

His men began climbing the wall.

When one arrived at the top of the not very tall structure, he got his face kicked by a man who hadn't been there a moment ago.

"This is not your land, Lord Bolton."

The stranger kicked two more off the wall. When they fell, they did not get up again. The man wasn't kicking them that hard. Roose couldn't see the trick here. He usually saw every trick before it happened.

"Who are you, dead man?" Roose demanded.

"This is the fourth wall. There are four now, not two, as when Robert visited. Or three, as when Lord Tully came begging."

This was the bastard Whent, then.

All the better.

He didn't need to send men into Harrenhal to bludgeon him with stones.

Thankfully, he hadn't planned to send all his men over the wall. He had planned to accidentally run into the opposition, though. Bolton waved his hands and his archers loosed special arrows with stone tips at the fool. No metal at all.

Two struck home.

The man bled, Roose could see that. That was a start. Bleeding usually came before dying. The young-looking bastard just waved his hand. Was he holding a little stick?

"Loose," Lord Bolton commanded.

There was no second volley.

Roose looked back and saw that his men were all frozen. Some would be a lifetime getting their armor off. Some were drawing bows or winding their crossbows. Roose discovered even his horse was frozen.

What?

He hadn't heard anything of this...

...not since he was a child, being told cradle stories.

Fell magics, like what the Others used. Magics.

This King Robert...and that idiot Tully...had not discussed. They had both been too stupid to mention such a thing - or to notice it at all.

Roose tried to jump off his mount...but found his lower torso was unmoving.

"I knew you were clever and dangerous." The man on the wall, the probable Whent-bastard, had jumped down. "I'd heard your reputation. I met a few people who passed you information. Curious and amoral, ambitious. Dangerous."

He dabbed his fingers in his own blood.

"I didn't know to what extent. I don't underestimate people, but I did you."

Roose found the only thing he could do now was move his jaw and swallow. Had he and his men been poisoned? Roose had never heard of this kind of magic...and he had quizzed Qyburn extensively about his studies of the arcane.

"I'm surprised that stone arrowheads - no, they're almost more like glass, is this the dragon glass I've heard of? - went through the clothes I'm wearing. That's pretty painful. In fact, that's the worst I've been hurt since I arrived here. That's some kind of bragging right for you."

Roose swallowed. Force had failed. Now it was time to try the diplomatic tongue.

"I didn't mean it..."

Roose hated begging, of course. He hated being under the control of something he didn't understand even more. He would remember this and adjust and not have this problem in the future.

"Look at me."

Roose did not.

Looking at a king or a...what?...wizard had a way of multiplying problems.

Then Roose found his head moving on its own.

He couldn't close his eyes.

The wizard stared at Roose for some time, long enough to flay the skin off a man's hand. Roose was that fast.

He had the sense this wizard was faster.

Instead of flaying a hand, this wizard was flaying Roose's mind.

Lord Bolton was sweating by then.

Then Whent looked away, disgusted.

"It was a good plan," the stranger said. "Having your men shed the metal they carried on their bodies. I'll have to remember that for the future. I can't just rely on such a simple precaution as a magnetic trap."

"If it was a good plan, why are all my men poisoned..."

He couldn't bring himself to admit that magic might exist. He knew it, but he wouldn't say it.

"You didn't know about me. You're right not to look me in the eye. I'm able to read your thoughts. The vile things you had planned for my home. No."

The man knew it all then.

"I am just lucky I am considerably stronger now. You wouldn't believe it, but two years ago I wouldn't have been able to 'poison' more than one of your men at a time. Now I was able to take them all into an undreaming sleep, like that."

Good luck for him. Bad luck for Roose.

"You drag craziness with you wherever you go. It's not enough for me to just give you a cell inside Harrenhal. I would'nt have you befoul it with your presence. I also cannot let you go about your business. I need to make you a teacher of lessons in this brutal place."

"I demand a trial by combat."

"You have had your trial, Bolton. You failed a trial by mind."

"What are you doing?"

"Instructing."

The man knelt near Roose's frozen mount and put a stick into the ground.

No, not a stick.

A cutting. Off a tree.

"Lessons that people will learn from."

"I teach all the time," Bolton said.

"Leaving a flayed man behind as a warning is crude compared to what I had in mind. I doubt you've ever taught anyone a good lesson in your life. I won't make you start now. You will teach them that brutality gains them nothing. You will teach this lesson for a thousand years. A good use for a bad person."

The wizard pointed his stick at the cutting before he walked away. He paused near the wall and watched. Then Roose did, too.

In short order the tree began to grow. One little cutting pushed up roots on every side of Roose and his mount. Inch by inch. This wasn't a normal tree. No, it was going to have a huge cavern in its base, one large enough for a horse and a man. Roose quaked when he saw that the roots were up to the level of his boots. Then he had a hard time seeing out. Roose was going to live in the center of a tree that hadn't existed minutes earlier.

"Don't," he said.

"The tree will eventually be able to break you down, make use of your rotten body. Traitor's Tree? Maybe you'll give it a good, haunted reputation. The Groaning Tree?"

Then Roose was entombed inside that growing tree. It was fully dark and he was unable to move, save for his jaw. He yelled, he screamed.

"I'll keep you fed and watered. Don't die too quickly. The Groaning Tree needs time to gather a reputation. Fear. Like you so desired in life - maybe you'll just earn it in your new job."

Roose was still screaming when a steady drip of water fell into his mouth and almost drowned him.

When it would stop for a time, Roose would continue to groan.

Water and air, that was all there was.

But, the hunger... The hunger would have driven him insane. He waited to die and waited - but he did not die. The water had some sugar in it, enough to keep him at the very edge of subsistence.

Roose hadn't enough energy to think about what a right bastard he'd crossed.

He couldn't think of his son, Ramsay.

He couldn't help his ally, Walder Frey, nor warn him off. If Roose weren't there, Walder would knock everything into a giant mess.

Roose did not die. He wished to, but he did not. He groaned in the darkness.

XX


	3. Chapter 3

**The Wizard of Harrenhal**

 _Chapter 3  
_

XX

A/N: Thanks for all of the reviews and support. I'm glad most of you are enjoying the story.

XX

Maester Danden observed what he could from one of the towers of Riverrun. If there weren't so many damned trees in the way. The forests were thick around Riverrun, but lately they seemed even denser and taller.

Maester Danden had been in the tower off and on since the siege began. First, he'd looked at the Lannister forces. Later, he looked at the wall... It was still there. It still cut the besieging force in half. Maester Danden had been through a siege or two before, but now the castle was besieged and so were the besiegers.

Who or what had made it?

He was grateful for it, no question. But it wasn't something he understood, even after pondering over the thing for weeks.

The wall had gone up overnight three weeks ago. Some of the Lannister men had been thrown out of their tents when it rose out of their ground - that was the story making the rounds.

He had not long been at Riverrun, but he was perhaps the most senior person in residence at the castle right now. There were no Tullys in Riverrun, not living ones at least. It didn't help him with his nerves. The only thing he could do was wait for some force - any force - to break the siege and relieve them.

He concentrated on what he could control. Sending out messages he could do, although not without some risk. Three in four ravens made it away without being shot out of the sky. Still, having the enemy read any of their messages was disconcerting.

He had ordered the food supplies inventoried. He had already put the castle on three-quarter rations. They complained that it was like they were at sea. Perhaps, but with them situated in the river, there was no limit on the water they could drink.

They were holed in for a long siege.

The wall that ran through the Lannister camp had changed things, but it hadn't exactly eased their situation. It also made those inside the castle rather uncomfortable, nervous.

They understood a siege.

A wall that grew from nothing in the dark hours of the night? No, they didn't understand that.

Dawn began to make her feelings known. The first rays of the run began to rouse the Lannisters who weren't on the overnight watch.

Now that he had the sun, Maester Danden used his scope, two crude lenses housed in a steel casing, to do his count. The enemy had had a few more deserters. He could count the piles of armor and weaponry at the base of the wall. One pile for every man who needed to hop over the strange wall.

The trapped portion of the Lannisters had discovered that if they shed their armor and weapons, anything in iron or steel, they could climb the wall to the other side.

Of course, if they were caught by the far larger portion of their force on the other side, the zealots would kill them.

Maester Danden continued his observation. There. Jaime Lannister was still on the Riverrun side of the wall.

He turned back to examine the wall. The daily supplying had begun. The maester watched soldiers throw over foodstuffs. Wrapped haunches of deer, maybe. The Lannisters could fish, too. The well-supplied side of the wall had failed to fling over barrels. They always landed and cracked on the wall. Whatever fluid was inside was wasted.

Maester Danden put down his scope.

Little had changed overnight. He would come back in a few hours and look again. In the mean time, we planned to help out with the water collection and perhaps some of the fishing.

Whatever fish they caught supplemented their formal rations so there were many people eager to fish, though there were only a few places that were protected from a sieger's arrow.

The fishermen worked in shifts, of course.

A little fish, safely procured, was better than risking lives. Maester Danden had to say it every day when people groused that they were hungry. A little hunger was better than being a lot dead.

The Maester began to stretch and prepare for the climb down the tower when the corps of the Lannister troops startled near the tree. They began moving...and then not moving. They all went stiff.

Maester Danden brought up his scope again.

Jaime Lannister was frozen. The men patrolling at the wall were frozen. Everywhere the maester looked, he saw frozen men.

There, by the woods... There was motion. Maester Danden focused in on the movement. It was a man, not a man-at-arms. He walked through the frozen men. He did not run or hurry. He took a leisurely, firm pace.

He got near to the river when the bridge lowered.

The bridge...lowered.

What?

Maester Danden was screaming at the men below to raise the thing.

When he looked down, he saw that the men inside Riverrun, including those closest to the bridge, were also frozen.

Maester Danden abandoned his scope and rushed down the stairs. He wasn't a fighter, but he wasn't going to let his castle fall in this way. Was it trickery? Had they been betrayed from the inside?

He ran into the main courtyard where the stranger had just arrived. Everyone here was still frozen, like the Lannisters Maester Danden had observed.

Maester Danden looked at the gate in the distance. It was back up again, fully secure.

How...

"Maester, tell me, where is Lord Tully?" the stranger asked.

Right, that news hadn't spread far. Not yet. "You mean Lord Hoster?"

"Yes."

Maester Danden had no intention of spilling Tully secrets to this infiltrator. He vowed to say nothing. Then his mouth opened. "He perished two weeks before the siege began."

Maester Danden hadn't meant to say that. He did not like to lie, so that was why he had planned to say nothing.

The stranger closed his eyes.

"Where is his son, Lord Edmure?"

He struggled against speaking. "A captive, we hope."

"Hope?"

"A captive is better than a dead Lord."

At least that was true.

"So you hold the castle?" the stranger asked.

"It is my duty."

"Well, I had intended to talk to Lord Hoster. He was a brutal man, but clever. Where is his brother, the Blackfish?"

"With the men-at-arms, hopefully on his way to relieve us from the siege."

"No army will ever relieve you from this siege, not when that wall will keep them out."

"It keeps out steel, not people."

"So you and the Lannisters have discovered. Still, it's enough to halt an army."

"Please, you must let them in, assuming you control the wall..."

"I control it, but I have no need for an army here."

Maester Danden felt ill.

Their stranger, by the way he spoke, was no savior.

"What do you intend?"

"I want no Lannisters on my land. I want no Tullys here, either. Your people started this war..."

"We did not murder Eddard Stark."

"The war started before that," the stranger said. "With two daughters of House Tully attempting to kill a son of House Lannister, but doing it poorly. I don't mind treasonous-minded people, I suppose. I just like them to be good at what they try."

Maester Danden had no idea of what the stranger was saying.

"But House Tully has held Riverrun for a thousand years."

"Yes. The Tullys have held land at this spot for a thousand years. What kind of stewards have they been?"

"Fair ones."

"Perhaps. Better than the Ironborn. Better than many others would be. However, I judge on a different scale."

"What scale?"

"You have no weirwoods in your godswood. The trees there aren't actually old at all."

Maester Danden shook his head. "You judge us by the trees we have in our Godswood?"

What insanity was that?

Trees.

They weren't going to be helped because they had the wrong trees in their Godswood?

"I judge the Tullys you serve to be poor stewards for what I'm doing."

"You love trees more than people?" the maester demanded.

The stranger ignore the question. "It's been some time since I spoke with a maester. I expelled the last one that the Order sent me."

An expelled Maester. That man, as evil as a maester could be, had been in Old Town briefly before Maester Danden came north. "You're Hardiven Whent of Harrenhal."

It was a rare thing. Not many lords sent their maesters away after accusing them of espionage.

"I am," the lord said.

"Lord Tully was married to a Whent."

"He may have treated me poorly in her memory, too. I have no fondness for your late lord."

That hadn't worked. He hadn't known the history between Lord Tully and Lord Whent.

"I may decide to be kinder than I had planned. If you'll answer a few of my questions, maester."

He no longer struggle with these questions. He was going to answer no matter what he tried. It was his nerves or something. He chattered like a crow. "I'll answer if I can."

"When you find a child with unusual powers what do you do with it?"

"Powers?"

"Abilities, say telling the future or growing flowers in the middle of winter. Or having an especially tight bond with an animal."

Lord Whent was asking what a Maester did to children of magic. He had his orders on this topic and could not violate them. Also, he couldn't admit to them...

Then he had no choice. His mouth opened. "I kill them."

Maester Danden realized what was happening. Lord Whent could force a person to speak the truth. He was asking about magic because he cared about magic. He practiced it, too.

"You kill them?"

"I poison them a little to make them fall ill. Then I ensure they do not recover."

Lord Whent was silent a long while. Long enough for Maester Danden to imagine a dozen different ways that this man of magic might destroy him.

"Just the ones who are in the castle?"

Every question would condemn Maester Danden further. He wished he could stop answering. "All such cases eventually get reported here, even if just in story."

"So everywhere the Tullys control the land?"

"Yes."

"Do all Maesters do this?"

Finally a vaguely stated question. "I don't know."

"But you're all told to do it?"

The Maester stuttered out a yes. "We all receive that instruction."

"Then all Maesters - and all families that approved of what their Maesters did - are exiled from the land I am protecting."

Lord Whent pointed a finger at the sigil of House Tully. Then the colors and art changed. Gone was the fish. A white tree appeared on a field of blue. It looked like...well, it looked like a diagram of a heart wood tree.

"Which is more powerful: a sword or a tree?"

"The sword," the maester said.

"The Seven - and their followers - did a horrible thing over the years, forcing the cutting of the Godswoods, the weirwoods. Of course, if they were magic, then there would be no room for the Seven. The old leaders had to get rid the of the competition."

"I don't understand."

"Trees, specifically weirwood trees, are more important than swords."

That made no sense.

"You are safe, Maester. You will be a guest at Harrenhal in the cells. You can room next to Gregor Clegane if you like. He's almost over his fear of heights now. I'm told he no longer sobs at night."

A prisoner.

Well, he wouldn't be the first maester to come afoul of a lord.

"You are a wizard then?"

"Yes. If I had been a child, you would have made me ill and then killed me. I should take your knowledge of healing and poisons. You deserve neither."

At least he could defend his Order before he went into the cells. "There is no magic in the world. It's all stories."

"You are certainly sure of your view. I will tell you this, when I grow weirwoods back in the places they once existed, it's like lighting a torch in the middle of a vast, dark room."

If he wanted to be known for his trees... "Yes, Lord Arborist."

"I like it. Yes, Arborist. You have the honor of naming the Arbor of Harrenhal. Soon enough we'll have everything north of King's Landing."

Maester Danden couldn't believe that.

"One man can make that kind of war?"

"One man, plus his many students, can put as many people to sleep as they like. I have some other things planned for Old Tywin, though, after I extend the Arbor out that far. I hear a rather dangerous man has taken up residence in the Eyrie. I'll have to dislodge him from that protected place."

"But, how can you think to win?"

"I care not for crowns. My war won't be over until Westeros flows with magic again. That is my prize."

"Magic..."

Maester Danden sounded like contemptuous. He knew little of that discipline, even the stories. It was what fools studied at the Citadel, fools and arcane scholars.

"I never wanted to play in this game. I tried warning one powerful person, but he was a brave coward at best. Now I am stuck with direct intervention, freezing armies and taking lords and exiling spies."

"I will go, if you let me. I will accept exile."

"You, maester, have seen too much. My first rule: I will not have dangerous people free to walk about when they could still hurt me."

Sound advice, so much the worse for Measter Danden.

"The Seven chopped down the weirwoods, along with many others. The Order of Maesters murders the magical children it finds. Everything I learn of your secrets makes me angrier."

So, yes, the savior of the Tullys was also the one who would expel them and reclaim their house seat.

XX

Jojen Reed looked around in wonder. He'd traveled beyond the wall just by touching a long branch. The place smelled...so clean. The magic was strong here, too. That added to the cleanness of the place.

On the other side, the snow was deep. He wished he was dressed warmer...and then remembered he knew a spell for this. He cast a warming spell on himself.

Better, much better.

He looked at the branch. The portkey was horrible and wonderful. He was going to be able to do that someday, Lord Whent had said his magic should prove strong enough. He would do it, but he didn't think he would ever like it.

"That's the end of our break. Are we ready for the next leg of our field trip?" Lord Whent asked.

"Yes."

Jojen was excited and terrified.

They were about to go to Valyria. As in Old Valyria, the Doom, the home of the Dragonlords.

It was supposed to be haunted and then there were the Stone Men.

Jojen couldn't foresee anything bad happening from this trip and he was usually sensitive to negative possibilities, but...

The other students were quiet. He knew a few of them well. Alyse was the oldest student, probably twenty, and she had a direwolf that she had left behind today. There was a girl who was often quiet, but Jojen knew she came from Sunspear or close by, in Dorne. There were three former wildlings and a few others who Lord Whent had found on his various travels.

They were never all this quiet. Jojen guessed everyone was nervous.

There was a trip every few months, but this trip would beat all the others Jojen had been on, he was sure. He started learning from Lord Whent after the trip to Pentos, then he'd been to Asshai and Lys.

They were trying to see what magic was still out there in the world. Catalog it, collect it, and bring it back to Harrenhal. They were trying to piece together the old magic. They had gotten bits of the technique for how to make Valyrian steel, but they were still missing most of it. They had quite a bit of dragon lore, the stuff that the Dragonlords of Valyria had figured out.

Lord Whent took his students to mostly the former colonies of Valyria, where the magic and written lore had spread from Valyria. Volantis was supposed to be the next trip in a few months.

Assuming they didn't all die of greyscale on this trip or get blown up by a volcano.

"Is everyone ready?" Lord Whent asked.

He didn't wait for an answer. He cut another branch and it flashed a faint blue for a moment. Jojen grabbed on.

The whirling and flinging motions he could do without.

He fell to the ground...no, to the sand and ash. He looked around him and stood up. The snow was gone, but the magic here was incredible to feel. It wasn't as calm, though. This was a wilder, hotter magic.

Who would have thought that magic came in flavors?

Jojen looked at everything. He thought it looked like how a desert had been described to him, but the sand was softer because it was mostly ash. Jojen had once walked inside a mill that had burned down. This place felt like that to him, except the ash was everywhere.

He could see the mountains - no, they were volcanoes - through the haze.

"All right. Everyone standing, everyone okay?"

Jojen murmured a yes.

"You all have things you know to look for," Lord Whent said. "That shouldn't stop you from noticing other things. I've never been here before. If Alyse hadn't pushed so hard, I wouldn't have brought you all here. Consider this place dangerous. Good? Remember your digging spells. I'm assuming some of the good stuff has been buried for a long time. Let's be back here in two hours."

Some of them paired off.

Jojen liked to explore on his own. Usually he would go through nothing more dangerous than a market. This was his first time in a wild place. Still, he didn't find a companion.

He could feel some plants that were surviving in all of this. Jojen was one of the few who were interested when Lord Whent spoke about the possibilities of potions, assuming they could find appropriate plants and figure out their properties.

It was strange to him that Lord Whent didn't already know.

Maybe he'd been working on other kinds of magic?

Jojen moved quickly, apparating from place to place. He found several plants he didn't recognize. He took samples. Leaves, roots, stems, flowers, seeds: whatever he could get.

He felt more magic to his east.

He popped over and was glad he'd found something that might once have been a garden.

He kneeled and began collecting samples of the different plants. One looked a little bit like mustard. Another could have been the top of a leek. Close but not quite.

He moved around the patch with some speed. He stopped and looked around when he heard what sounded like a yell.

Someone shoved a wooden spear tipped in metal in his direction.

Jojen fell on his butt and stared up at the woman. He noted the greyscale first. She was still mobile, but was on her way to being a Stone Man - or Stone Woman.

Jojen grabbed at the necklace he wore and pulsed magic through it.

He reached for his bag, but the woman stabbed with the spear again.

He wasn't leaving that behind.

A moment later, the woman and her spear stopped moving.

"We can't take you anywhere, can we, Jojen?" Lord Whent said.

"It's not my fault."

His savior took a quick look at the situation.

"I'm guessing this is her garden. You were picking things. Her things."

Jojen nodded. "I didn't know."

Lord Whent looked at the immobilized woman.

"Why didn't you immobilize her?"

"Well... I don't know."

Lord Whent wasn't angry, thankfully. "You need to finish learning this skill."

"I'm working on it. But I still need my wand."

"And where is your wand?" Lord Whent asked.

Jojen looked at his bag. "Uh. Well. It's in here."

"I once had a teacher, of sorts, criticize me for where I kept my wand. I can help you fashion something better than your bag."

"I can do it."

"Then I'll expect to see what you come up with at your next lesson."

Lord Whent turned and began examining the woman afflicted with the greyscale.

"I've never seen it before. Have you?"

"No, Lord Whent."

"I'm surprised that it's a magical disease."

Jojen hadn't noticed. He had been a bit busy falling on his butt and trying to keep from being speared... He wished he'd grow into his body and stop being so clumsy.

Lord Whent produced a knife of some kind. No, not produced. Jojen realized he'd conjured it. Jojen was a long, long way from conjuration.

Lord Whent flaked some of the material from the unmoving woman. He collected it on a piece of cloth.

Then the knife disappeared and he bent down to look at the scale.

"This makes me think a little of scrofungulus. But it affects more than the neck. I wonder..."

Jojen had never heard of scrofungulus. It sounded horrible.

Lord Whent made one gesture at the woman.

Then he tried a second.

Jojen watched as the scaly skin just started flaking off the woman.

"Very good," Lord Whent said.

A minute later, she looked clear of the disease.

Lord Whent cast more spells on her. He was checking his work, Jojen guessed.

"Tenacious stuff, but not as tough as scrofungulus. Thankfully for her. She'll be weak for a while, but it's gone."

He vanished the woman's spear. Then he woke her and had a strange conversation with her. Yes, she was cured. No, he wasn't lying. That went on for a while until Lord Whent inquired about where she was from - and how she had gotten to this place.

Jojen was unhappy with some of her answers. She had come from Myr and had been exiled here because of her disease.

"Do you wish to return to Myr?"

"Why? My family sent me here. They will not believe I'm cured."

So Lord Whent picked up another stray. She didn't feel magical to Jojen, but Lord Whent taught people whether they had magic or not.

He picked up a stone and made a portkey. "We need to meet the others. Did you get what you came for, Jojen?"

"A little. Maybe. Some of it may be things she brought from Myr."

"Well, you can sort through it later."

Jojen chose to say nothing. He felt like he'd squandered the day. He'd gotten into a battle with an injured woman - and still managed to lose.

He extended his hand to touch the portkey and then all of them disappeared.

Their new addition was very startled by the experience of a portkey. She and Lord Whent began a conversation - more like her trying to form questions and him answering the increasingly baffled woman.

The others of the group began returning soon after.

Lord Whent calmed the woman down and began the last part of the field trip: show and tell.

Each person or pair got to show what they discovered. The others got to ask questions. Lord Whent determined if anything was the slightest bit dangerous.

In today's haul, there were books or fragments of books. One person found a cache of letters that had somehow survived. They felt infused with magic, so that might explain it. There were carved blocks of stone that felt strongly magical. There was a chain made of metal that Jojen thought might be Valyrian steel. There were specialized metal tools.

Wydden, one of the wildlings, had the last discovery. A stone that felt magical. He passed it around.

To Jojen it felt warm.

He passed it along.

When it came to Lord Whent, he was quiet a moment. "It's not a stone, Wydden. Where did you find it?"

Wydden explained where he'd gone. The girl who'd gone with him corrected him. They argued a moment.

Lord Whent put a stop to it, then.

"I guess we all get one last chance to explore." Lord Whent held out another portkey. Their former greyscale victim was the last to reach for it.

This time she screamed when they arrived.

Not good.

Up in the hills, some small heads, like bird heads, popped up.

Then the 'birds' took to the skies.

Jojen could see that they weren't birds.

They were dragons. Three dragons, massive ones.

The stone, Jojen realized, hadn't been a stone. It was a dragon egg.

Wydden had stolen one without disturbing or even noticing the dragons nearby. He must have been an excellent thief before he'd been accepted for magical studies.

The former greyscale victim screamed when the dragons dived for them.

Lord Whent held up his hand. Some form of shield erupted around them. It withstood the dragon flame. Jojen didn't even feel the heat.

With his other hand, he waved at the dragons.

One by one, they settled on the ground, folded their wings, and fell asleep.

"I can go look for more of the stones," Wydden said.

"Eggs. They're eggs," Lord Whent said. "No. No, we'll leave them for now. We know where to find dragons and we can come back easily once we're ready to handle them."

Come back?

Jojen wouldn't volunteer for that trip.

"Who did they survive here?" Wydden asked.

"All the men in these lands died in the Doom, but the dragons, they were hardier. They survived and no one living knew it. Marvelous, Wydden. You just discovered something no one else had in three hundred years."

The group was in awe of the immobilized, but living, dragons.

"Why didn't we sense them before?" Alyse asked.

"I guess that where they nest, so close to the volcanoes, it makes them hard for us to spot. Their fire magic feels similar to the fire magic of the hills and mountains."

Alyse nodded.

"Good work, Wydden. Very good. Let's hope some of the other things we found are nearly as good."

"Can we stay longer?" Haelen asked.

"We can come back on a different day," Lord Whent said. "Then we can focus on learning more about dragons."

No one disagreed with that. Jojen might come down with an illness, though. He'd volunteer when there was a market to investigate. Dragons, no.

"Thank you, Alyse, for talking me into this trip. If Wydden hadn't been so...curious, we might have come here and not realized the most important thing of all."

"Can we work on dragons next?" Wydden asked.

"Soon. We can dabble. But, we need to conserve magic so that we can feed it into the fifth, and final, ring wall. I raised the first four myself, but now you're all ready to contribute."

"How big will it be?" Alyse asked.

"It will stretch from the Wall to the Reach."

"What?"

"It won't center over Harrenhal, like the first four. Our home is plenty safe."

"You never told us how you made the first four."

"Well, you're closer to being ready. But, it won't be the same as the first four. It will use different spells. The magnetism ward I was using isn't quite strong enough to be a final protection.

"What about the seas?"

"That is part of the reason this wall will be different. It will travel under the water, too. We'll be sealing most of the ports we control. Save maybe for Eastwatch and possibly Lannisport."

"Why?" Jojen asked.

"Magic. If we're going to bring magic back to Westeros, we need a lot of land and a lot of weirwood trees. We'll need space now that we've discovered there are dragons in the world. We'll need magic for them, too, I suppose."

"Magic?"

"I suspect, although I don't yet know, that they don't just eat meat."

"They eat magic?" Alyse asked.

"They do. We do, too. A magical person doesn't just eat porridge and boar steak. We all need at least a little magic. Otherwise, well, we wither."

Jojen knew he would be coming back. Story or no story, all of Lord Whent's students would be coming back. He would have to look into a weapon. Maybe a spear? He wondered if there were others in Harrenhal who could teach him.

He was terrified of dragons, but he also couldn't stop looking at them.

XX

Jeor Mormont stood well away from Castle Black as the dawn broke. Now he could see what he'd felt hours earlier, in the darkest part of the night.

The Wall wasn't just melting a little as normal, the wall was raining. Enough to fill ten kegs set down in front of it in a minute. Castle Black, which he'd ordered abandoned, would very soon become a deep, cold lake rather than a place for Builders and Rangers.

The rain intensified as the sun began its day's work.

If this wasn't just happening here, if it was happening all the way up and down the wall... They would lose all of the castles. The wildlings hadn't been able to smash the wall in hundreds of tries over thousand of years, but something else had.

Jeor felt like weeping as the Wall did.

This was the end of the Night's Watch.

He was Lord Commander of Nothing. His men...

There was a startled noise to Jeor's left. Not so far away was a small man who looked very tired. He looked about as surprised as the Lord Commander felt.

Jeor really couldn't let his attention wander. He hadn't seen the young man at all.

"Hell. I really didn't expect that," the small man said.

"Get back to Mole's Town, get them evacuating. There's no telling how deep this water will get."

"Don't worry about me."

"Boy, pass the warning."

"I'm just looking at a few things."

"Who are you?"

The strange figure looked at the melting Wall, then he started grinning.

"Boy, I tell you, get away from it. It's no longer safe to be close to it."

The small man kept smiling while he shook his head. He ignored Jeor.

Jeor started to ignore him. He was watching as his men removed what they could from the upper stories of the castle. Anything on the first floor or below would be saturated.

"Can you feel it?" the stranger asked.

"What? Cold, miserable, pissed?"

"The magic. It's moving as freely down here as it did beyond the Wall."

"Magic."

Of course, people would call this magic. It wasn't every day that something which stood for thousands of years began to melt.

"Boy, get back to your family."

"Hold up. I'm trying to determine when it will come down."

"It's coming down now."

"No, it's starting, but this will be going on for a long time. Nine months. Maybe longer."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Jeor demanded.

"As I said, I didn't expect the Wall to come down."

Expect? Expect. This boy was claiming to have done this to the wall. Tormund Talltalker didn't speak so crazily.

"But I won't apologize. The magic is so free now, it's everywhere... I didn't expect anything like this, but it makes sense now. The Wall must have been gobbling magic from here all the way down to King's Landing. It pulled in everything for a thousand miles or more. Now... the Wall is cut off and it's going to become one hell of a lake."

Jeor wanted to punch the smaller man to get him to stop talking. Still, if he knew something... "Explain. Now."

"You can't just make a wall of ice and expect it to stay up even in the warm months."

Jeor was surprised. That actually...made sense. You got ice in the winter on the top of a lake. The rest of time it was water. It was cold up here now, but not freezing.

"So how has it stood for thousands of years?"

"I explained that. Magic."

Of course, not everything the small stranger said made sense. The small man was half-insane and Jeor had a much bigger problem.

"They built it somehow and then they pulled magic from the south - but not the North, not a bit from there, interesting. They set the Wall to pull magic from the south to keep it cool and solid. The builders of this thing feared pulling in magic from beyond the Wall."

"Whatever happened, it's a fucking disaster."

The stranger began to laugh.

"It's an accident, true. This is the biggest screw-up I've made in a long, long time. But it's not a disaster. It's a better result than I ever should have got. Sometimes my luck does roll good."

"Stop laughing," Jeor said.

"None of my students mentioned that something like this could happen. I didn't see it starting. Now that it's going, there's no stopping it."

"So you say."

That craziness had better not being catching... Jeor had work to do and men to keep in line. They'd be panicking...

"I couldn't figure it. Beyond the wall, there was all kinds of magic. In Asshai, in Qarth, in Valyria, it was free and massive. But below the Wall, even to King's Landing, there was almost none. This Wall, this damned Wall, was taking all of it. Eight hundred feet tall, however many miles wide, and a total waste."

"Shut up and start evacuating Mole's Town. I'm going to be the Lord Commander of Wall Lake, but we can still save the people in the village."

"The water won't reach that far for a week or two."

"Get moving. I'm tired of your craziness. But, first, you're going to tell me who you are."

"I am Lord Whent, the Wizard of Harrenhal."

Curse his tongue. The stories that made it even up here to Castle Black. Jeor had thought the stranger touched or crazed. But this wizard... The stories. He might have actually caused the Wall to start melting.

Where the hell was Longclaw? He'd left it behind, hadn't he?

He could take this wizard's head. His crime? He'd just destroyed the Night's Watch. He'd let the wildlings through. Hell, he'd let the Others through if they weren't just cradle tales.

"Undo it. Stop it."

"I changed the design for the fifth ring wall. It was meant to keep the magic in. I had guessed it was escaping or being drawn away for some reason. No matter how many weirwood trees I planted, the situation didn't improve all that much. Now...now the world has its magic back."

"What good is magic? If there's no Wall, what the fuck will keep the wildlings out?"

The crazy little lord looked at Jeor with anger. "Why would I want them out? I'll keep some of the other things out, the unnatural ice demons, but the people? Let them come."

Then the stranger was gone, disappeared.

Jeor had to get what men hadn't run to somewhere safe. Maybe to Eastwatch? He had to see what might have survived this mess.

Then he had some ravens to send and some news to get out into the world.

The Wizard of Harrenhal was real. Real enough to melt the fucking Wall.

XX

Theon Greyjoy was still seasick. It had been so long since he had been on a ship. It was disgraceful, but there was nothing he could do.

There had been so much talking among his father and his chief raiders. So much talking that they were very late starting on this most important raid. Theon Greyjoy was going to buy back the respect of his family by leading the sack of Winterfell.

He had come to Pyke to beg support for the Starks. Now he was returning to the Starks...those who had kenneled him, something like a dog.

He would trade back one family for his original one. He felt horrible about. He felt fear. Still, he didn't say no. He'd been too weak for that.

His reward? He was a Greyjoy, but he was not trusted. He didn't have more than one ship under his command - and the ship's captain didn't trust Theon all that much.

He had fewer than forty men.

To take Winterfell with the twenty or thirty men - as some would stay with the ship - he'd been given him because it was impossible. He was expected to fail. He was expected to be weak and fail.

Wrong. Theon was strong. Theon would prove that.

He had to.

"What the plan, little Greyjoy?" one of the more vicious of the crew demanded.

"Do you have a map?" Theon asked.

"'Do you have a map?' Can you believe this clean little lordling? Smells better than my wife, even after he's been puking all day."

A few laughed. Theon said nothing.

He waited for the fucking map.

He needed not to flinch when these men tested him. One failure...and it wasn't so hard for the wrong man to wind up with a blade in his back during a raid. His Lord Father would shed no tears.

Eventually, the lead asshole nodded. They brought a map and Theon began explaining his plan.

"Where do we land?" the hard ass demanded.

"We have two options." Theon put his fingers on the map. "Here or..."

He didn't get to finish his presentation.

The noise was a great crash. The motion was a sudden yank and most of the men lost their footing. Theon cracked his skull against the plank he was using as a table.

The wood of the ship shuddered and creaked, like the voice of a widow wailing for her drowned husband.

What had they struck?

Everyone was up again, scrambling. They were in clear water. The men were at the side of the ship looking for floatsam. Nothing. There was no reef, no sand, no hidden mass of stone.

The cracking continued.

The ship was grinding against something they couldn't see.

No, not grinding.

The ship was tearing apart, against nothing that anyone could see.

This mission. This mission had offended some God. Perhaps the old gods because the Drowned God had nothing against raiders.

This mission was doomed. They were all...

Some of the nails used to hold the planks to the deck began to break. The strain was so great that iron nails broke. Iron.

A ship dying was not a fast process.

It was irreversible, too.

The crew tried. They all tried, but the ship wouldn't have it. Crack, groan, snap. Then the rushing of water. Then the grunts as men were suddenly wet and very cold.

The ship sank beneath them.

Theon had never learned how to swim. None of the men on the boat had. They were superstitious and now they were all about to drown.

Unless the sea creatures were hungry.

Theon was bleeding from when he'd cracked his face. Something in these waters might enjoy the taste of his blood.

He offered a prayer, unanswered, to the Drowned God.

XX

Alyse and Gymma moved between the groups of wildlings. She had tried to make herself clear to the Thenns, but languages weren't her thing. She'd have to let someone else converse with them in High Valyrian or whatever it was they spoke.

The others seemed receptive, even the no-longer King-Beyond-the-Wall, Mance Rayder.

Alyse caught up with him on her next stop. He had a wide grin on his face. He hadn't had to lead a glorious army, but he'd gotten what he'd wanted. Free access to warmer lands.

"Tell me the story again, Alyse."

"You've it heard it four times at least. The one thing I will say again: yes, we accidentally destroyed the Wall."

Mance grinned like a small child given his first taste of ripe berries.

"And Mormont? Tell me again about him."

"I've told you about him and the Halfhand and all the others I've heard about. Stop grinning. Your teeth will fall out."

"Aye, they might. I'd just eat pap then."

"Pap and too much ale, like a large infant, though always drunk."

"Well, there are worse ways to die. I've always dreaded fire."

Alyse was done with the niceties. "Will you take a boat across?"

"I fancy I will."

His tone of voice indicated otherwise. "But not today?"

"There is only one hole fully punched through the Wall. I'll wait until it's all down and we don't need wizards to keep the hole open and dry. Eventually the whole thing will melt making a vast lake. Then I can just cross whenever I like."

"Remember, though, your boat cannot contain any metal."

"You've mentioned that before. Why?"

"Metal on your person or in your boat will cause it to sink at a certain point."

Mance grunted. "That tricky wizard who took you in?"

"Very tricky."

Mance didn't take his eyes off her face. "He married?"

"No."

"Not good enough for you? Have you abandoned the old ways? I can see your face. You want him, you steal him."

Alyse flushed at the advice.

Mance looked out at the emptying camps. All the weapons they'd gathered, all that metal had been abandoned up here. Like traces of people who had broken free from a prison. "All I wanted was for them to be safe. I got everything I wanted."

He did sound satisfied, but Alyse had always thought him...well, more a conqueror than a philosopher.

"Your empire is breaking up," she said.

"Being a leader - it makes your beard fall out and your hair turn white. Nothing good comes of it, but for the right result it would have been worth it."

Lord Whent appeared then.

"My Lord."

Alyse did not kneel, of course. But he expected that from no one.

"Alyse. Mance."

"You traipsing around up here, too?" Mance asked. "Causing problems. Stealing the best of my people."

"That I do," Lord Whent said. "Get your ass in a boat, Mance."

"Next time."

Lord Whent shrugged. He turned to Alyse. "Jojen has the gap in the Wall protected. He'll be able to hold it another hour. Then it'll be a few more months until we'll have time to come back. Apparently I have to evict the troublemakers from many, many castles throughout the Arbor. Casterly Rock, the Eyrie, Highgarden, a hundred more. Every castle and holdfast in the land..."

"Arbor. Couldn't you have come up with a better name than the Arbor of Harrenhal?" Mance asked.

"I didn't name it."

"Well, you should find something better. Call Casterly Rock something like Prig Valley. I knew a Lannister, not a good person."

"Maybe we can turn Casterly Rock into a school for hog farmers," Lord Whent said. "Nothing would chap a Lannister's ass like that. Pig butchery 101 taught in their former great hall."

Alyse smiled. Mance laughed.

"What for Highgarden?" Alyse asked.

"I'll have to think about it. The Eyrie is useful for no purpose, as odd as it is. Maybe we'll convert it to a full time prison, every spy will get sent there. Assuming I can take the place without dropping it on the ground. The Wizard of Harrenhal doesn't always do subtle well, it seems."

"No, not when you can break the Wall without even trying." Mance roared with laughter.

"Yes. Well." Lord Whent was still thoroughly embarrassed about that.

Then he tapped a bag he had with him. Alyse nodded. She recognized the contents and where Lord Whent was going. He disappeared.

"Mance, one favor," Alyse asked.

"If I can."

"Keep your people, your former people, out of the mountains near the Fist."

"Why?"

"If all goes well, there will be new permanent residents there."

"What kind? More wizards?"

"No. Dragons."

He craned his neck hard enough to snap it. "What? What did you say?"

"Dragons. Three adults and seven dragon eggs."

"But dragons have been dead for a century..."

"Dragons in Westeros have been dead that long. Not in all the other places."

"Not in all the other... Where the hell have you traveled?"

"Here and there."

Mance grunted again. "As mystical as that other one. Go on."

"You'll pass the word?" Alyse asked.

"Dragons."

"We know there's ice demons well north of here. Dragons will handle them far better than any ice wall would. The other option was a wall of flames. Lord Whent researched how to make it. It's possible, but it wouldn't be easy..."

Mance considered the idea, but he was still startled. "I'd rather dragons than a wall of fire."

"Mance, will you pass the word?"

"Aye. Though I won't say it's because of dragons. No one would believe that."

"Soon enough they'll see them, hear them."

"Dragons. Wizards and fucking dragons. Get out of here. Go make some more boats that have no metal in them. And steal yourself a good man. You're plenty old enough as it is."

"Shut it, Mance."

XX

A furious Arya Stark had accepted this invitation - or had been made to accept the invitation. Why? 'You'll hurt yourself training with the sword. You're distracted, Arya Stark. Come with me. We'll do some exercise to make you work better with Nymeria.'

There were horrible and strange rumors that started a few days before the fifth wall went up.

She couldn't focus when...

...rumors flew that the Freys had betrayed and murdered Robb and Arya's mother.

...news arrived that King Joffrey had been poisoned and died after he'd tortured some girls to death in King's Landing.

...there was a girl rumored to live in the Eyrie who was not red of hair, but who had the features Arya remembered on her older sister, Sansa.

Lord Whent was trying to get further news and confirmation.

If it were true... If the rumors about Robb and her mother were true...

Arya had been waiting for the war to end so she could safely make her way to Winterfell...only for one of Robb's allies to betray him. She felt Nymeria licking her hand. Arya smiled a moment.

The boy next to her was Wydden, another of Lord Whent's students. Arya learned from him, too, though in a smaller way. She couldn't wiggle a stick and make things float, but she could see through the eyes of Nymeria. Perhaps she could see through the eyes of more animals. That was what she was supposed to be learning about.

They were moving toward the Vale. They were almost at the Bloody Gate.

As Arya had heard, the fifth ring wall encircled the Vale, the North, the Westerlands, the Riverlands, and the bulk of the Reach. The Starks had been confirmed in Winterfell as had quite a few of their bannermen. Robb was Lord there...

Unless, the rumors were true. That could mean that Bran was Lord Stark now... Damn the rumors.

But the Vale was that day's problem. Arya relished seeing some blood. She was in that kind of unforgiving mood.

The group stood well back from the narrow passage that led to the Bloody Gate. The Bloody Gate was guarded by men who warned off Lord Whent with words and arrows directed to his party.

"The Bloody Gate is sealed," one of the archers called out again.

So these people had received news of the final ring wall... Whoever actually ruled in the Eyrie now was nervous, whether it was Arya's aunt, Lysa, or Petyr Baelish or whoever.

Arya almost smiled.

She did not have magic in her the same way that her brother Bran might and that Lord Whent's other students did, but she had witnessed some of the training the Lord did for those he collected for his small school.

She could only imagine what the Wizard of Harrenhal was about to do. He did not like people who told him "no" and shot warning arrows in his direction.

She, and Nymeria and Wydden and the others, stood well back from Lord Whent. He was at the front of the group, in the most danger. Which was, of course, the best spot in an army.

"This doesn't have to be a fight." The wizard's voice carried on the wind. "Bring me your master, Baelish. I understand he's said he'd like to talk to me."

"Who are you?" the bowman called down.

"I am the Lord of Harrenhal."

"Lord Baelish is the Lord of Harrenhal by order of King Joffrey."

"See? Now you may see why he'd like to talk to me."

Arya laughed.

The bowmen responded with more arrows. But the group was set back far enough to remain safe. Lord Whent raised his arms. "Enough persuasion. Now we'll try some force."

The bowmen launched arrow after arrow, but all fell short.

Lord Whent dropped his arms. The cliffs guarding the way to the gate wobbled. The bowmen wobbled, too, when the stone underneath their feet heaved.

They stopped firing and then they started falling into the crevasse. The narrow approach to the Bloody Gate was filled with bowmen lying on their faces or moaning on their backs. They had all tumbled a great distance, but none of them looked dead.

Lord Whent waved his wand at them and they formed up, two by two, and marched out, where they froze as if carved from stone and then painted.

"Wydden?"

"My Lord?"

"We have some volunteers for spell practice. Get them all immobilized for me. I suspect I will need all my resources to deal with the Bloody Gate."

"Yes, my Lord."

Wydden went to practice his spellwork on the 'volunteers.'

The cliffs stopped heaving then. The flat surfaces they had once been were now turned into jutting stones and spikes that were inhospitable for any force to occupy.

"Bloodless," Arya said. "He's going to put us out of work." She tapped her thin sword, Needle.

At least she still might have been of use for her talents in skinchanging.

"I heard that, Arya Stark."

"Yes, my Lord."

"I would not have these bowmen die because they're listening to yet another monster protected in yet another castle."

The group began to move down the formerly protected corridor. Arya could barely walk next to Nymeria, who was quite large. People walking three abreast down this corridor would be easy pickings for archers. No wonder the gate was called bloody.

The walk was over fast enough. Lord Whent waited for his people to spill out of the corridor before he called for his bundle of sticks.

More planting.

It was safe to travel with a wizard, but not fast because they stopped to plant these trees everywhere.

This time he didn't have his people do the planting. Lord Whent levitated the cuttings and sent them up where the bowmen had formerly stood. He had rocky ground and would now have it supplemented with trees. People who might wish to use that as a military chokepoint in the future would have some trouble.

She secretly loved trees, especially the heartwoods. Perhaps he'd grow another one today. They were coming up much more often now, Arya had heard it said. Perhaps one in one hundred trees, not one in one thousand.

When Arya had asked Lord Whent why he spent so much time growing trees, Lord Whent just said that it was a favor for magic and a favor for him.

She didn't pretend to understand him.

Wizards...

Lord Whent seemed happy with the newly growing trees. Arya craned her neck to see if any would become heartwoods. No, not any she could see.

At least the planting was faster than normal. Lord Whent didn't often risk his people doing something that could be dangerous. Arya wished it were otherwise. She liked a little danger.

She liked the distraction, too. It kept her from thinking of rumors and blood and possible deaths.

"Wydden?" Lord Whent called out.

"My Lord, I've just finished."

"Up here, with me. You've never seen large scale transfiguration, have you?"

"No."

"Up here. Arya come up. Rhonys, you get to see this lesson, too."

Arya, with Nymeria, advanced toward Lord Whent.

Rhonys, a new student a Harrenhal who had been found in Volantis not long ago, was unsure of everything - except for the fact that she hadn't wanted to remain in Volantis. She walked more slowly.

They were still some distance from the Bloody Gate, the one that had never been taken. Lord Whent looked at Wydden. "Walk me through the steps."

Always a teacher, Arya thought. That was how he was most comfortable.

"You have source material?" Wydden asked.

"Yes, the Gate."

Arya's eyes opened. The Gate was monstrous.

"You have your wand?"

"It's a training tool. Remember you will not always have one with you. You need to learn finesse even without it."

"Yes, my Lord. Uhh, you have a clear idea of what the transformation will be?"

Lord Whent smiled. "I do."

"Then. Uhh, all that's needed is the power."

"Correct. Sound more sure of yourself. You have the theory well learned. Now, it'll just be experience. You take that stone over there, the large one. Transfigure it."

"Yes, Lord Whent."

He sounded a little miserable.

The stone resisted for some time, but eventually it turned into...well, a granite twin of Nymeria.

"That's very nice," Lord Whent said. "Arya, how's the likeness?"

"Very good, Wydden."

"Now, I have in mind a pair of trees," Lord Whent said. He turned to face the Bloody Gate.

Then the monstrous gate shattered at the top into two pieces. Each half of the gate began to flow like water tipped out of a stream, looking for a new bed. The two half-gates rapidly shifted so that they resembled two black trees. Monstrous ones. Heartwoods of black, not white.

"You did that to the carved fish in Riverrun?" Arya asked. "Turned them into heartwood trees?"

"I did. I'm considering it for every castle we take."

They camped that night and began early the next morning for the Eyrie, all the while planting cuttings as they walked. Trees, trees...

Arya wondered how they would get inside the Eyrie. It looked almost impossible to conquer.

The march was slow. They were planting trees everywhere. It made the procession look a bit ragged, but Lord Whent directed the actions himself.

As they closed with the Eyrie, it was clear that those inside the Eyrie had no intention of engaging in a battle they might lose. All the gates were closed and archers posted.

That was what Arya would do if she had a castle like this one, a defensive masterwork.

"Arya, I know you have a close bond with your wolf. Have you managed to complete the process with a bird?"

"No, Lord Whent, not yet."

"Well, your mind inside a bird would become the best kind of scout there is. Keep working on it. I would have liked to know who was all in that place."

Arya felt a little ashamed. She was instinctive working with Nymeria. The other warging was much harder. A dog was hard, even a cat. Her direwolf was easy. A bird: no, she wasn't even close to that.

"No shame," Lord Whent said. "We have other ways to find out. Time for a lesson, Wydden."

The apprentice wizard joined his teacher.

"How are you with the Rumbler?" Lord Whent asked.

The young man nodded. "I have the spell learned and can use it."

"All right. There's your target." Lord Whent pointed at the nearer support for the Eyrie."

"You want me to use the Rumbler on something that large?"

"It's good practice."

Wydden didn't seem to agree, but he drew his wand.

"Wandless, for now. Let's see how you do."

The apprentice put his wand away. He had a grim look on his face, like the child forced to recite for the teacher after not learning the lesson.

Arya couldn't detect anything. No, there, an archer lost his footing. Those on or in the structure could feel something.

"Good. Take a breather. That's the exercise you do, at this point, to build up your strength. Now, draw your wand. Try again, let's get a greater intensity. You have better control with your wand, but that's just so you can get better all around. Eventually you'll put down your wand. They're uncommon and mark you as a wizard. You can also become dependent upon them. All right? Let's have another Rumble for our friends."

Wydden brought his wand down and Arya could see movement now. Several of the visible archers fell to their knees. Arya couldn't see what was happening on the inside.

"Enough, Wydden. Enough. That's fine. We'll give you, and the others, more opportunities to practice this one. Get some water, get off your feet. Take a rest. It's not easy."

"Can I see you perform the Rumbler, my Lord?"

"Yes."

Wydden didn't move.

Arya didn't, either.

Nymeria instantly clung to the ground, her whole body as tight to the earth as she could make it.

The ground even under their feet swayed.

The Eyrie in front of them was swaying from side to side, then up and down. Arya could see it all. She could hear the terror from inside.

It lasted a few minutes.

"Now, Wydden. Water, some food, a rest."

"Yes, my Lord."

"We'll see if they're ready to talk now."

Lord Whent turned to instruct some people in planting more cuttings.

Arya worked to soothe Nymeria. Her direwolf had no love for the quaking of the earth.

An hour passed.

"You can trot back away from here, Arya. I note your wolf didn't like it."

"We'll stay," Arya said.

This time the performance lasted three times as long. There was visible damage inside the Eyrie. There were people falling from the building.

It was horrible. She also couldn't stop watching. Power, in Westeros, no long came from steel and men and sieges.

One man could break a castle into rubble.

A white flag flew from the building. Then another, then another. All the sigils were dropped from the castle and replaced with white flags.

Lord Whent released his spell.

The soldiers and others who descended from the Eyrie were covered in vomit and some in blood.

Two men were bound and carried down the treacherous walk.

When the group stopped, there was a disheveled young woman at the head of it.

"You are young to be Lysa Arryn," Lord Whent said.

"Sansa," Arya said, as she ran up. "This is my sister Sansa. She's alive." Arya looked at Sansa. "You're alive."

"I'm no ghost," Sansa said. "I had heard you were dead."

"You're both healthy," Lord Whent said. He looked confused, but he still pushed on. "Lady Stark, who fell from the Eyrie?"

Sansa hugged Arya before looking back at Lord Whent.

"My aunt, the late Lysa Arryn, perished several days ago in her bed. Of a fever. Today, Lord Baelish had her body and that of the late Lord Robert Arryn pushed out - to make you think you'd killed them."

Arya hadn't heard anything about her aunt being dead.

Another body... Another branch of her family gone.

She'd gotten her sister back, but there was a bit of death attached to every mote of good news.

"Ah, yes. That's the first trait of a good schemer. Always have someone else to take the blame. Is he one of the ones you bound?" Lord Whent asked.

"He didn't want to surrender. When the stone works began to crumble, some of the men still loyal to the late Jon Arryn set upon this Usurper, the so-called Lord Protector of the Vale."

"Get him up here."

Arya had met this man before. She still didn't like the look of him: tall, thin, rat-like, hungry.

"I expected to have to pull you from the building like one pulls a whelk from the shell," Lord Whent said.

Arya had been hoping for it.

"Yes. Well... Your show with the Bloody Gate frightened many inside. The shaking... None of them cared to plunge from the sky."

"Who is the other one?" Lord Whent asked Sansa.

"Ramsay Snow," Sansa said.

"Ramsay Bolton, Lord of the Dreadfort," the secured young man with the crazy smile said.

"I was to marry him tomorrow. Lord Baelish had sold me to him for some help in one of his schemes."

Sold?

Her sister. From a whoremonger to a grinning monster.

Arya wanted to kill them both.

Lord Whent was not so blood thirsty.

"We'll have tents prepared for everyone. The castle now belongs to the Arbor of Harrenhal. Lord Baelish and the distinguished Snow boy will be my guests at Harrenhal. The others we will interview and decide upon."

"Yes, I've heard of your cells," Baelish said.

"I can give you the one next to Gregor Clegane, if you prefer."

"He's still alive?"

"Oh, yes."

"I'd prefer somewhere apart from him."

"As you wish."

Lord Whent waved at his rested apprentice. "Wydden, let's see how your stunning spell is today. I'd like them both not to go anywhere."

"Yes, my Lord," the apprentice said.

"It's going to be like this at every castle. The cells are going to overflow at Harrenhal."

With that, the opening of the Vale was begun. Lord Whent would remain for days, planting heartwood cuttings, on his way to the largest secondary castles in the Vale. Arya almost didn't notice the passage of time.

For once, she was very glad to be in Sansa's presence. They mourned together over the probable loss of their mother and oldest brother.

But they also smiled and acted like sisters, too.

XX

Daenerys Targaryen was not unnerved by the riders. She had thousands of soldiers standing behind her and three dragons in the air above.

These were five men on horses. No, six.

Six men against eight thousand soldiers, plus three dragons?

She ordered the halt.

The riders slowed and then stopped in front of her. The six men dismounted and walked the distance to her.

The man who spoke had a voice that was high in pitch. Eunuch, she thought. He was certainly very flowery with his greeting.

She waved off Missandei from offering a similarly flowery greeting.

"You know who I am. Now please tell me who you are - and why you've stopped to speak with me."

"I am Varys, the spymaster to your late father."

Daenerys knew the name. Illyrio had once mentioned him when he was a little drunk. Secret-keepers were well advised away from wine.

"And to his Usurper," she said.

"Yes, that is true," Varys said. "I have been trying to make conditions favorable for you - and your late brother - upon your return to the Seven Kingdoms. I wish for you to gain the Iron Throne."

Daenerys doubted that very much. He might wish for her to be useful to him, that she would believe. Whatever he had done for her would have been for his own benefit first. Still, he was an interesting man and the day had been tedious.

She would give him a few moments - and a compliment of sorts. "Well, if you had a hand in introducing me to my late husband, I thank you. I needed that dose of reality."

She said nothing else. Let this unctuous man think what he would.

"Introduce the others," she said. To her ear, she even sounded like a queen.

"I have brought Lord Commander Jeor Mormont of the Night's Watch..."

"Why isn't he on the Wall then?"

The old man glared at her advisor Jorah, but stepped forward. "Queen Daenerys, there is no more wall."

"I've heard that it was 800 feet tall. Did you lose it?"

A few people smiled.

"The Wizard of Harrenhal destroyed it. He claims it was a mistake, but the wall is melting all the same," the distraught old man said.

Daenerys had no idea why this was important.

"This is Lord Mace Tyrell, he was away from Highgarden when the castle was taken," Varys said.

"Taken by whom?"

"The Wizard of Harrenhal."

Ah. Daerenys got what this delegation was about. She, after all, had spent the early years of her life as a refined sort of beggar.

This Mormont, father to Jorah probably, had lost his wall. This lord had lost his castle. Varys...well, Varys struck Daenerys as a professional trouble stirrer. He was in his element now. Everyone had enough desperation that his talents were coveted - and his advice taken without question.

The objective? They wanted someone to handle this Wizard and return the castles. They needed someone in command of magic that might overwhelm someone referred to as a wizard.

She listened to the other introductions. This was more engaging than she had first expected.

She ordered a tent set up for the consultation. These travelers would not get to their point quickly, she foresaw.

The old man and Jorah looked at each other across the tent, but did not speak. Daenerys supposed that was better than them pretending the other was not there.

Children, both of them.

"Say your peace, Varys. I suppose you speak for them all."

"I have that honor, yes."

She nodded. The eunuch lived for moments like this one, where he was needed and valued.

"We would like to offer your Highness ships. Ships enough to transport your newly won army to Westeros, to a place of your choosing, of course."

They wanted her dragons and her army. They really were gluttons.

She nodded gravely. "Varys, you claim you have worked to make a world where I would be welcomed back. Not so long ago, your fellow Westerosi killed my family. I have a hard time thinking I would be welcomed back, even if I were riding on your ships with an invitation signed by all the Great Houses."

"Well, until recently, you might have been correct. The situation we find ourselves in makes for strange...bed mates."

So politic.

"Anyone who tries to bed three large dragons will find the experience unpleasant, I fear."

Varys smiled, but did not even pretend to laugh.

She wondered what he was really doing here, tipping his hand, handing over many secrets he'd kept for so long. Someone among her people, Daenerys realized, kept Varys current on her movements. Who? Jorah, perhaps? Or did Varys pay a network who passed messages, city by city, as she moved about Essos?

Probably both. There were probably more spies than she could imagine. There was only one queen and so many people to look at her.

"Please get into the details for a moment. He has your castles. What do you want?"

"I want Highgarden," one of them said.

Varys turned to glare.

The man went silent.

Varys looked at Daenerys for a moment before continuing. "There is talk of peace. This Wizard of Harrenhal has proposed a preliminary meeting. He's still sacking castles in the Reach, Highgarden was the last to go before we sailed, but he talks of peace and swapping hostages."

She was supposed to infer his desires from this? Why couldn't he speak plainly?

"You want me to play ambusher for you? Kill your troublesome wizard?"

Varys said, "We should do something before he takes the Westerlands and completes his control over the bulk of the Seven Kingdoms."

"Explain."

So Varys did.

Daenerys had to hide her true reaction. One man had done all that? Daenerys, despite herself, was interested.

"So I only say it's a beautiful time to visit Old Town, where these talks for a general peace will happen. I'm told you've never been."

He was quiet after.

Daenerys just looked at him. What a funny little man. How might his mind work and how many might it kill?

That was all that Varys had come to say. Daenerys would have to guess at the rest.

She looked at the other delegates.

"Lord Mormont, you traveled a longer distance than any of these others. Why have you come?"

"Varys asked me to come because I am the only man alive and unimprisoned who has met this Wizard."

"If he's imprisoning everyone, how did you get away?"

"I wasn't behind his magic wall. When we met, he was on my land, looking at the damage he did to the Wall. Ask me what you will. I traveled all this way to tell you about him, if you were interested."

"Unfortunately, I already know I will not like him. I haven't yet met a person of magic who I do like."

That settled the people in the delegation.

As for Daenerys, it made her begin to think. She could continue traveling to Yunkai or she could...take the offer of ships and leave. Her goal was the Seven Kingdoms, but the slaves of this place tore at her heart.

If she got bogged down here, she might never get to the point where she crossed the Narrow Sea.

"Let us talk about a deal," Daenerys said.

Varys smiled.

She thought the spymaster was definitely in his element.

What was the most ridiculous thing she could ask for? She had to judge for herself just how desperate these Westerosi were.

"I am willing to discuss my sailing for Westeros."

"Good, your Highness."

"If you were willing to send an army here."

"What?" Lord Tyrell asked.

"I have obligations here. I'm not going to leave this place worse than I found it. Send me an army to hold Astapor and to take Yunkai and Meereen, in my name,...and I will board ships for King's Landing with my soldiers. And my dragons."

Varys looked like she'd knocked him down and had a Khal's stallion piss on his face.

She did enjoy reminding everyone that she was a queen and had a queen's mind.

XX

A/N: Yes, the fifth ring wall caused a lot of unanticipated problems. It destroyed the Wall and a submerged portion destroyed the Greyjoy ship. I suspect the underwater portions of the wall destroyed many ships: merchant, pirate, raider, smuggler, and otherwise. Unintended consequences writ large.

Harry is, after all, making it up as he goes. He's a wizard, not a sailor.

On Joffrey: His hearing about the Wizard of Harrenhal made him go crazier, earlier. Baelish rescued Sansa earlier and carted her off to the Eyrie before Joffrey could kill her, too. The young king was poisoned by prostitutes after he got a reputation as a killer of prostitutes. Olenna Tyrell did not need to perform the deed this time, although I'm sure she's still tough enough. Baelish got his negotiations going with Ramsay Snow earlier as a result.

XX


	4. Chapter 4

**The Wizard of Harrenhal**

Chapter 4

XX

A/N: Yes, this is the last chapter. There is a short epilogue at the end.

XX

Queen Regent Cersei Lannister sat in her tent next to her son, King Tommen. They were in Oldtown, of all places, for a "Peace" Conference.

She would see about some peace. Just as the Reynes had found some peace. Lannisters remembered Castamere.

She had finally stop sobbing daily since Joffrey's death. No Jaime to hold her. Not even father to help. She and Tommen had been alone in King's Landing since Myrcella had traveled to Dorne.

Her only objective with this farce was the return of her family. She had every belief that the Westerlands had fallen to this Wizard. She wanted her uncle Kevan back and all of her cousins. She would kill to have her brother Jaime back as well as her father. As for Tyrion, let the Wizard keep him.

Once she achieved the return of her family, she was ready with her other plans. There was a reason Cersei didn't have many living enemies.

Jon Arryn was dead. He was about to become an enemy, but Cersei had no hand in his poisoning. She had received some of the whispered blame anyway.

Robert was dead. Her one-time lover had handled that for her, doping a flagon of wine and letting Robert get gored to a slow death.

Ned Stark, the fool, had died for Truth and Honor.

The Lady Stark and her firstborn. Lord Frey would get many rewards from her hand, just as soon as they retook the Riverlands.

Hoster Tully, of natural causes. Cersei considered him an enemy, but she had nothing to do with an old man perishing.

Joffrey's intended - later Tommen's intended - the Tyrell girl was in a prison cell under some charge or other. Cersei didn't know if she was going to have the girl killed or maybe banished to the Silent Sisters. Disfigured? Something appropriate.

So many dead, or imprisoned, when it benefited her. This was the reason one accumulated power: to remain standing, above the ground, while walking the cemeteries of the damned.

Her eyes were fixed on the gate to the northeast of Oldtown.

The negotiations, according to the letter she'd received, were supposed to start this day at noon. King Tommen had no Hand, at Cersei's insistence, so she would play the lead in the negotiations. The Spider had fled to Essos to beg for help from the little blonde girl who supposedly had dragons. Baelish had disappeared. She was basically the Small Council, too.

According to the sun, noon was hard upon them.

"Your Highness?" a page inquired.

"Yes?"

"The scouts say that a party is advancing to the other side of the gate."

Cersei nodded.

Things would begin on time. Cersei would see that they ended according to her desires.

She would do anything, say anything, promise anything to get her family back. Then they would hear the lion roar.

The gates opened slowly.

Two dozen people in drab clothes ventured out and rapidly set up a tent.

Then one person walked out. A small man - or a large boy. He stood under the tent. "My name is Hardivent Whent. You consider me a dispossessed Lord of Harrenhal. Still, I control it. You may call me Lord Whent today."

He looked around, but his eyes were mostly on Cersei and Tommen.

"Let us open these talks with a gesture of good faith. Let me now return your people."

Inside the tent, there was the brightest sort of light, ten thousand candles in a space no larger than a man. From this light walked people, dozens, then hundreds, then more than a thousand.

Cersei couldn't help but burst into smiles. She hadn't even had to beg. There were no obstacles to what had to come next.

Brynden Tully. He looked like he been drunk for the last six months solid.

Littlefinger. Figures he'd been captured.

Olenna Tyrell, better off if she'd died.

A pack of gray robes. Cersei had no use for maesters.

Freys, still rat-like. Her father found them useful, but Cersei didn't.

More Freys.

Ser Gregor Clegane. He was much diminished, almost a ghost of a mountain rather than a knight.

More Freys. Cersei supposed there was little to do in the savage North than multiply ugliness. Still...

Jaime. Her twin. She couldn't take her eyes off him.

She knew other people were emerging from the light, but she didn't give a damn.

Her brother was healthy. He wore his gold armor and had that haughty look about him. He was alive and he was here. Cersei could breathe again.

The last year had been misery. Myrcella sent to the heathens in Dorne. Jaime lost for a time. Joffrey lost for good. Casterly Rock and father cut off.

"Mother? Mother, should we go and greet grandfather?"

Cersei looked at her second son. "Yes, Tommen."

She rose and walked to where her father stood. He was thinner than she remembered, but hale.

He was already speaking to Jaime. "He came for Casterly Rock last."

Her father sounded disgusted.

"I had marshaled all the forces we had. We were packed into Casterly Rock and all the catacombs below. He slagged the Lion's Gate. Then the golden lions within the keep came to life and began to attack all of us. They did not attempt to kill people. They broke swords and crossbows. They slashed at armor. We had no weapon capable of even denting them, not even stone and bricks."

If this were any other person, Cersei would have him flogged for lying to her. But Father? He didn't know how to lie, at least not to family.

"He killed no one?" she asked.

"I counted maybe twelve dead, of eight thousand men. When every person was disarmed, then he walked inside the castle. Alone. Those golden lions forced the men out of the Rock until it was just me and a few of my advisors remaining. He made me watch while he wandered, discovered our most secret vaults, and rifled through them like a brigand. He carted out books while I watched. He carted out the oddities that have piled up for a thousand years, but he left the gold."

"He...left the gold?" Cersei almost stammered.

"Yes."

No Lannister ever left gold on the table - or in the ruins of their vanquished foes.

"Insane."

"It gets worse."

"How?"

"He has students. He is training others to wield the same powers he has."

Cersei did not move. She did not wince. She gave no notice of how distasteful she found that bit of news.

It was all the more critical that she handle this wizard now. Today.

An army of swords would be useless against a handful of people like this wizard, assuming the stories about him were even a quarter true.

A sudden memory assaulted her, then.

"My late husband once said...well, that I would come into conflict with Lord Whent. He advised against it. I wonder what this man said or did to Robert."

She had not thought of that moment in some time.

"He told you something like that - and you didn't mention it?" Father asked.

"He was drunk."

That she hated him and valued nothing he said, she left unstated.

Her father was not pleased. "No tricks, daughter. Not against someone we do not understand."

"No tricks."

She had been telling lies to her father since before she became a woman. He had not yet caught her in one.

He would be happy when the wizard was dead and their lands were theirs again.

The last of the people came through the...portal, that might be the right word. The viciously bright light ended.

Of course, getting the thousand or more people out of the way took time.

Much time. Too many joyous reunions were happening right in front of the King.

Take your tears elsewhere, the Queen thought but did not say.

She had chairs brought for her father and her brother. Jaime stood, though, as a Kingsguard.

Cersei touched Tommen's arm.

The young King knew his lines. "Lord Whent, we are elated to receive back our subjects. Thank you."

"A peace conference must begin with the best of intentions." The wizard looked at Cersei.

"Since you requested this conference through a letter, can you please tell us what are the terms of the peace you suggest?" Tommen asked.

"I would be glad."

Someone in the wizard's tent handed the wizard a piece of parchment. The terms were going to be brief, Cersei imagined.

"The Arbor of Harrenhal will exist within the borders of the ring wall. Members of the Arbor may climb the wall or use the gate, when open, to leave. Subjects of the Seven Kingdoms may abandon all metal on their bodies and climb the ring wall to apply for membership in the Arbor. However, the Seven Kingdoms will send no Maesters and no Septons into the Arbor. The Seven Kingdoms will send no other forms of spy. Once per year, at our discretion, the Arbor may hold a Grand Market near each of the gates in the ring wall. We may sell whatever it is we wish. The Seven Kingdoms will not prohibit the markets or punish those who frequent them."

None of that made any sense to Cersei. "What else?"

The wizard looked at her. "That is the list in full."

"I must have missed the part where you return the land and castles you...claimed." She barely remembered to use a more diplomatic term for 'stole.'

"The land belongs to the Arbor."

Arbor? She'd thought he was joking.

"You intend to grow many orchards? Apples, plums, what? That's why you took the land?"

"Something like that, yes."

Her mind was looking for problems. One that occurred to her was a set of faces missing from the returned. Had this wizard allied himself with one of the Great Houses in particular?

"Where are the Starks? I didn't notice any of them in the returnees."

"The Starks have made their oaths. They retain Winterfell," the wizard said.

So, they had all lost, save for the Starks. Lannisters dispossessed along with Freys, Tullys, Tyrells, and the minor houses... No. She did not accept that.

"Eddard and Catelyn and Robb were traitors."

"Not to the other families of the Arbor."

Not even to you, Cersei could hear in her mind. A conscience? No. She didn't have one. She would rather invest in other luxuries.

"And Stannis Baratheon?"

"He was not inside the ring wall when I raised it."

Cersei thought that wasn't much of an answer. Where was he? He wasn't in the Stormlands or Dragonstone, she knew that.

"How many other families remain on their lands?"

"The vast number of what you term small folk are unaffected. Many minor houses who control some land from a freehold have seen no changes."

"Really?"

"To the people living on the land, the change is not much. To the Great Houses, the view is somewhat different."

"You have..."

Tywin leaned forward. "My daughter? If I may."

"Father. Yes, please."

Father would know how to speak to this infuriating bastard.

"Lord Whent, your wall breaks the unity of the Seven Kingdoms. You have taken all the fertile areas of the Kingdoms. Now I expect that we must import food from overseas. You must see that this is untenable."

"The people in the Arbor seem to be happier than they were before, at least on average."

"I'm sure that's nice for them. But the Great Houses..."

"There are no Great Houses in the Arbor."

"The Starks remain."

"The Starks are members of the Arbor. Nothing more. They are not a Great House as you would call them. They aren't Kings of Winter. They are just another family."

"But they hold a great castle."

"Many families do and all of them are required to perform a service to the Arbor. The Starks have agreed to host a school for woodsman and masons and builders."

Nobility sharing a castle with a school. Never, Cersei vowed.

"What of the other empty castles?" Father asked.

"The Arryns are dead so the Eyrie belongs to the Arbor. We will use it exclusively as a prison. The Dreadfort is now a school of the military arts. Highgarden will host our school of agriculture and forestry. The Twins are no longer a residence, just an important crossing. Riverrun will host two schools, one for fisheries and one for administration. Lannisport and White Harbor will expand their ports as we have need of specially built ships for our trading activities. We have not yet decided on Casterly Rock, I'm afraid."

"And Harrenhal? What service do you provide?"

"Harrenhal once hosted the prison cells, but that is now the Eyrie's responsibility. It will continue to host the school of magic."

"And how many young magicians do you teach?"

"Enough to make you worry."

"Yes, but..."

"There is no but. I conquered these lands. Your ancestors did a poor job managing these lands. We'll see if the Arbor can do better. If not, someone else will try to conquer them and throw us out."

Cersei stood. "You aren't even a lord. My late husband might have signed a piece of paper saying you are..."

"I see that you are skilled in what you term politics. When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the law is with you, rely on the law. When all you have is fear and gossip, let your lips curdle the world."

"What did you say?"

"The term bastard."

"Yes," Cersei said.

"Does it matter if my parents were married? Does their relationship to each other matter at all when it's clear I have this land - and you do not. Possession, Queen Cersei, trumps your surprising concern with bastardy."

She shut her mouth and sat down.

This wizard knew much and said very little. Why?

"I think we should take a break," King Tommen said. "We will have a meal set out before we resume."

Cersei made herself not smile at that.

Tywin walked across the gap between the tents. Cersei moved more slowly, but she was going to hear whatever her father had to say.

"I don't suppose I'll ever see Casterly Rock again?" Father asked.

"Stranger things have been rumored. Like a porpoise that can fly or a Lord who gave away his gold."

"You did not say what you will do with it."

"The current thinking..."

 _The_ current thinking. If it were him alone, he would have said 'My current thinking.' That was interesting.

Her father realized the same thing. "You have advisors?" he asked.

"Of course I do. We had thought to turn Casterly Rock into a school for mining. Of course, with the state of the mines in the Westerlands, that may not be necessary."

Tywin went pale.

Cersei goggled at that.

The state of the mines... Well, what was wrong with them?

"We'll find a use for it, please don't worry."

"Keep it in good condition. I expect we'll have it back from you soon enough."

"I always like to meet an optimist."

Cersei had never met a man who could make her father speechless with a compliment.

Various lords went to the wizard. Probably all of them were begging. All of them had lost their lands.

Cersei would be the one who decided if they got them back.

She returned to her tent and sat with Tommen.

"I'm hungry, Mother."

"This is a special banquet, but you will have to wait to eat."

"Why?"

"Do as I ask, sweetling?"

"Yes, Mother."

The servants struck a particularly large golden gong, one of the reminders Cersei had of Casterly Rock. Tywin had managed to get a few of the heirlooms smuggled out before the castle fell.

"Lord Whent, would you care for a meal?"

"I would, Lord Lannister."

The royals plus the bastard Whent walked to a third tent. It was larger and enclosed. It was cooled by massive blocks of ice that had been saved in caverns since the last winter.

The wizard looked at the banquet. Then he looked at Cersei.

"It's impressive. And you said you had no lands to grow food."

"The Great Houses will always be fed. It's the small folk who may go without," she said. As if it needed said at all.

She watched him make his selection. Any dish would do. A slow death or a fast one, that was his only choice.

He stopped at a glorious display of vegetables, some of the little harvest they could manage from the Stormlands. "Green beans with...manticore venom. Impressive."

"That is a horrible slander."

"Radishes with Tears of Lys."

"Tears of Lys have no smell, I'm told."

The wizard nodded. "I have more senses available to me than smell. This dish is boar with basilisk blood." He reached over and took a piece.

Cersei did not smile or accept any of his accusations. She just began counting down the minutes until he was on of the ground, dead.

"Delicious," he said.

"Basilisk blood? If the meat is tainted in that way, won't you die?" Cersei inquired.

"I suppose you would have discovered that I'm actually immune to basilisk poisons. I tangled with one a long time ago. It should have killed me, but I do remain immune. The boar is quite nice. I doubt anyone else would enjoy the dish, though."

Cersei gritted her teeth, but said nothing.

He walked down the table. "Nightshade. The Strangler. I'm sorry I don't know the proper name for it, it's only been mentioned in some books I confiscated. Some from Casterly Rock, in fact."

"We would like those returned."

"And I would have enjoyed a feast that others could safely enjoy. Too bad about wishes, right?" He paused before a platter of oysters. "These are unpoisoned. I suspect you had them put here for yourself."

"So you say."

The wizard ate two and continued down the table.

She was thoroughly embarrassed when he was done. For failing, though, rather than trying.

"I will not take offense at this. Had you made the attempt at my people, I'd have a different view. But I can take care of myself, Queen Regent."

"Daughter, we will speak of this later." Father looked at the wizard. "You said you expected this?"

"Viciousness from her? She is trying to make herself a legend for it."

Father glared at her. "You could turn her into a tree, I suppose, for the attempt."

"I could do many things. I prefer to leave her with the knowledge of her failure - also the knowledge that will spread to the others I returned to you. Failure makes for excellent gossip."

"Gossip?"

"Why do you think I returned Olenna Tyrell and Petyr Baelish and you, Lord Tywin? All the poison of the world. Ser Gregor Clegane. Ramsay Snow. Maesters and Septons and Knights. Minor members of the Tyrells, lords from the Vale, the Westerlands, the Riverlands. The Tarlys."

"I notice a few absences."

"Men did die in battle or before. The Arryn family is dead because of Baelish. The only one I...dealt with is Roose Bolton. He earned his permanent place in the Arbor of Harrenhal."

"How?"

"He'll be a teacher of hard lessons."

Cersei shook her head. She had run out of patience for holding her tongue. "Having our people back makes us stronger."

"It may."

 _May._ Cersei did agree with that, not that she said it. Many of those people were trouble. "Why did you do it?"

The bastard smiled. "I ran out of room in my cells."

"What's the real reason, Whent?"

He was quiet a while. He did not seem like he was going to answer, then he did. "I prefer you folks do damage to each other - that way the hate and the loathing stays out of the Arbor. I expect all of you will be back to warring again soon, just on each other."

Yes, the situation was entirely possible. Cersei would have cemented things if she had killed the wizard. Now...

"They are my peers," Cersei said. "We have respect for each other."

Of course, she didn't believe it. She had no peers and no respect for anyone outside her family.

"Perhaps. Though more certainly, they are the ones who will scramble all the harder when the stakes are so much smaller. One or more of them will kill you when you cross them. Why should I waste the time for a spell?" the wizard asked.

Lord Whent moved over to Cersei's remaining son.

"It was nice to meet you, King Tommen. You will need better advisors if you're going to live through puberty. Your mother's advice will get you killed."

"What?" he asked.

"I'm a wizard. I know these things."

He looked at Tywin and Tommen. "Our peace conference has ended without resolution. As expected. You will excuse me."

The Wizard grinned and disappeared.

Then the chaos really started.

Cersei had become accustomed to being in charge. Now there were ten other people here who thought they were in charge, including her Father, who really was in charge.

There was much yelling, especially from Father.

It took some doing to have all the food burned, not given away or buried.

Father said, "I will not kill a thousand people in Oldtown this day."

He got his way.

"Daughter?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Excuse us, King Tommen."

"Yes, Grandfather."

The King began his journey back to Oldtown.

Cersei's trouble had just started. During her interrogation she made all the appropriate noises and explained herself briefly.

She was having trouble simmering down his anger. She was no cook laboring over a bowl of brown while tending a fire. This was not the thing she did, this apologizing. A Queen didn't.

"Enough," she said.

"I am considering having you killed, daughter. Try one thing like this again and I will."

Those were the kind of words he said to...well, to Tyrion. Not her. She was the good child. "Father?"

"Poison? On a wizard? Are you really as stupid as you appear? Why must all of my children...disappoint?"

Cersei shot Father through with her rage.

Those kind of words were inappropriate for a queen. They should be directed at an Imp or a nobody.

Jaime came back into the tent. "There are more wizards in the other tent. They're...well, they're selling things. They have Valyrian steel swords. Lots of them, even if they're blue and gray rather than black and gray. They have fresh strawberries. They have flagons of a wine that's better than anything I've heard of."

Cersei walked out and looked at Lord Whent's tent. It was now set up as a market stall. People were browsing, even some of the people who had just been in Whent's cells.

Craziness.

"Smash the goods. Shut it down. He can't just do that."

"No one armed can walk inside. I'll bet an arrow wouldn't make it inside. Do you want me to walk inside and start punching people to make a point?" Jaime asked.

His tone was disgust.

XX

Bran Stark, the Lord of Winterfell, woke up in his room in Harrenhal. He had come down for the last procedure to heal his body, specifically the muscles in his legs. He could walk, not well, relying on branches of wood to help him, crutches he thought they were called. Bran wanted to be fully healed so he could start his lessons in magic at Harrenhal.

He had left Winterfell in the hands of Luwin, formerly Maester Luwin. He had been given the choice between returning to Oldtown or breaking his oaths as a Maester. He chose to remain in Winterfell and stop wearing the gray cloak.

He rang a bell and someone in the hospital came in and told Bran that the healers would be with him soon.

He asked for water.

"Nothing before the procedure," the young woman said.

Bran knew that. Still, he was thirsty.

The healers came within minutes and he was back asleep. When he woke up, the room was in shadows. His legs felt, well, they felt like his legs again.

The door opened and a healer walked in. "How do you feel, Bran?"

"Fine. Can I get up and walk?"

"Yes. You should be fine to move around...a little."

Bran got up and took a few steps. Then he fell back asleep. He was moving well the day after his final round of healing.

Lord Whent came just after Bran had started eating his noon-time porridge.

Bran almost knocked the bowl onto the floor. There were the former lords who used courtesy titles with each other, Bran was now one of them as he could still call himself Lord of Winterfell since he was the host of a school for builders.

Then there was real power. That power was the Wizard of Harrenhal.

"All my students are to call me Harry."

Bran smiled. "Harry."

"How are your muscles? Did my apprentice get it right?"

"Everything feels fine. No pain. I can walk."

"Maybe hold off on climbing walls for a while."

"Yes, Lord...Harry."

They were quiet a while. Bran didn't know what to say. He had been comfortable enough taking in front of his father or the men who visited him.

In front of Lord Whent, Bran felt...quiet.

"Do you like stories?"

"Yes."

"True stories?"

"Yes."

"Would you like me to tell you one?"

Bran smiled.

"All right. A few days ago I met my first avatar of the Red God, R'hllor. I'm still unhappy about the whole thing."

"Did you lose?"

"Almost."

That startled the young Stark. What could give Lord Whent trouble?

"Where did you meet?"

"North of Great Wall Lake. She was traveling with Stannis Baratheon and an army of mercenaries."

"An army..."

"The army was no trouble. This woman, Melisandre, I believe, was trouble."

"How?"

"She was prepared for what she knew of my magic. I was not as well prepared for her. Let me just say I had to do some quick learning."

"Can you tell me what happened?" Bran asked.

As old as he got, he still loved a good yarn. Though the stories around his own family, of Robb in the recent war and his father in the wars before that, he could not bear to hear. It was better this story than some other.

"Is that what you want? More than your first magic lesson..."

Choices, choices.

"Yes, I want to hear what happened beyond the Great Wall Lake."

"To be young again and hunger for a great story." The Wizard of Harrenhal made himself a chair and then sat in it.

Bran sat on his bed and listened.

Lord Whent started from the beginning, as a storyteller should. Bran hungered for all of the details, as a listener should.

"...not the hired army who was difficult. It was the Red Woman," the wizard said.

Yes. Bran had been waiting for this part.

The Red Woman.

"What was she like?"

"Are you asking if she was pretty?"

Bran shrugged, but meant yes.

"Perhaps you would enjoy her appearance. Perhaps, after I tell you this tale, you would not."

Bran waved his hand. That didn't tell him anything.

"Details? She was fairly pale and had red hair. She did not dress for the cold. But she never seemed to suffer from it."

"How?"

"Well, I was rather slow to figure that out," Lord Whent said. "It turned out to be very important. Also, her eyes. She was always looking at something. She was a thinker. She did not look cruel, but it turned out that she was. Severely."

"So, tell me, what did she do?"

Then, Bran shut up. That had been his excitement showing through. But it wasn't something one said to a king or to a person more powerful than a king.

Fortunately, Lord Whent just smiled.

"She could use magic, but in a way different from how I can. She was a shrewd opponent."

"Can you please tell me what happened?"

"Do you think I should?"

"Please."

"Fine. Stannis and the Red Woman left behind their rented army and approached to where I awaited them. We discussed what he wanted. The negotiations never really got started because she attempted to use some sort of shadowy demon to kill me. I had never seen anything like it before. Stannis just stood there, like he had seen it before."

A shadowy demon, this story was great. Then Bran remember it had actually happen. His momentary solemnity did not hold.

"Then what happened?" Bran asked.

"I couldn't find a spell to destroy the thing, but I was able to repel it..."

"How?"

Lord Whent paused.

Bran could barely tolerate the pause.

"How, my Lord?"

"I believe I asked you to call me Harry."

"Yes, Harry. How did you repel the shadow demon?"

"Something you may learn. A useful spell called the Patronus. I had never needed it before today..."

"If you didn't need it, why did you invent it?"

"I didn't make all magic, young Stark. I learned from teachers, as you will. This was a spell they taught and I learned, but hadn't used in a long, long time."

"You don't seem that old to me."

"Well..." Lord Whent smiled. "I banished the demon and sealed it inside some ice, a temporary prison, and attempted to work my magic on the Red Woman."

"What did you try?"

"The usual spells. Stunning spells of differing strengths. Nothing lethal."

"Oh..."

Disappointment.

"Stannis tried to attack me. He I managed to stun. The Red Woman couldn't help him, but also didn't fall to the stunning spells. She attacked with fire..."

"Fire, really?"

"Are you surprised?"

That a Red Woman would use fire... "No. No, please continue."

"Yes, I know you're listening for the good bits. But I know how to tell a story, Bran."

"Yes, Lord Whent."

The wizard glared.

"Harry, sorry."

The wizard nodded. "I found I could not attack her directly. Whatever magic I used on her, she absorbed..."

"But you won."

"Even through your impatience, I did."

Bran was screwing up the story. "I'm sorry."

"You are a good person, Bran, but we will have to teach you to listen."

"Yes, my Lord."

"So, I could not use magic on her. I discovered I could use magic around her."

Bran sat, then, and awaited an explanation. How did one use magic around a person?

"I could entangle her with tree roots. I could blast at the earth. I could banish things through the air at her. She was the hardest opponent I've fought in a long, long time."

Wow.

"Is she still alive?"

"Aye. I needed to understand her type of magic better. I found a potion - one you can learn, many years from now - that her magic couldn't defeat. She is now sleeping...forever or until I wake her."

Bran smiled. He would get the full story later when Lord Whent wasn't so grouchy. It was sure to be a good one.

"You look tired."

"I am. The Others are marching on Great Wall Lake. The Others and their wights."

"But there are dragons up there."

Bran wanted to see some dragons. He really did.

"The dragons enjoy destroying the ice demons. But we will need to give them a little help, I think."

"How?"

"Yes. I am led to understand that dragon glass is effective against them. I can create something similar. I plan to grow a kind of forest..."

"Of glass trees?"

Lord Whent nodded. "Yes, an army of glass trees that can fight and attack."

"I would give anything to see that."

"I suspect you would." Lord Whent looked at the door. "However, I want to introduce you to someone."

"A teacher for me?"

"Perhaps." Lord Whent got up and opened the door. "You can come in now."

An ancient man walked inside.

"This is Bloodraven, or so he says," Lord Whent said.

"And he is Harry Whent, or so he says."

The Lord of Harrenhal just smiled.

"This old liar once lived well north of the Wall, but he managed to relocate south, to the Isle of Faces after I began replanting the weirwood trees. He wanted to talk with you. I decided to allow it, Lord Stark."

Bran was surprised at the title. He was surprised every time someone called him Lord Stark.

"North of the wall? Is there a city there?"

"No. Not to my knowledge. The old man was sitting within the roots of a massive tree."

That was impossible.

But, if he could, Bran might like a house in the roots of a tree.

He looked at the old man some more.

"That was where the center of available magic was in Westeros," the ancient man said.

"When he could have made use of his impressive skills to bring magic back to all of Westeros," Lord Whent said.

The white-bearded man said little to that. He looked thoughtful? Regretful?

Guilty, Bran thought. The young Lord Stark understood guilt.

Temporarily losing Winterfell.

Running away.

Having his older brother and his mother die, not to mention his father and likely his only remaining Stark uncle.

He was Lord Stark. It was just him and Rickon - and any sons that Sansa and Arya might have.

"Talk with him if you like," Lord Stark said.

"I will."

Lord Whent left the room.

"That is the most dangerous man in Westeros," the ancient man said.

"I know it," Bran said.

"Good, so let us talk. I know you have dreams where you walk through your wolf's mind?"

"How... How did you know that?"

"That is perhaps one of the things you may learn here at Harrenhal. If not from one of the other teachers, then perhaps from me."

"Who are you?"

"My name is Brynden. I am a greenseer and a skinchanger and much else. Here they would call those skills a medium and an animagus."

"I see."

Bran didn't. He had heard the terms, but knew little of what they meant.

"I do not use a wand as Lord Whent or his students can. His skills are more varied than mine. To be honest, he far exceeds me in power and deviousness."

Bran just nodded.

"You are fortunate that Lord Whent did what he did. He has likely prevented the Long Night. He has certainly strengthened magic ten fold here. He has given me more years of life - and made it possible for the Children of the Forest to begin growing their numbers again. Young Stark, we now live in an age of magic."

He had never thought of that. There had been an Age of Heroes. Now there was an Age of Magic. "It's amazing."

"But you too have a part to play..."

XX

Alyse couldn't have asked for a more beautiful venue. They were beyond Great Wall Lake, in the lands she'd known the early part of her life. Her brother and sister were here. Her friends were, too. And her husband. They had been married, informally, for some time. Now it was time for the public celebration.

The view was incredible. As far as she could see was a line of of trees, in the weirwood style, but made of a magical kind of glass by her husband and some of his students. Some parts of the line were five trees deep, others eight or more. It looked entirely natural, save for the fact they were all made of magical glass, some tinted with red, some tinted with silver, the rest clear.

This was the new Wall against the Others. Not something 800 feet tall that drained magic for a thousand miles. Something gentle looking and graceful.

Something deadly when roused.

People could walk around them, get married in front of them. Soldiers could march between them. But if the Others appeared, the trees began to move. Their branches would break a little, forming row after row of thorns and sharp edges. They could swing with great force and shred the trunk of a massive tree - or, likely, a column of wights or some of the Others on the their Ice Spiders.

Alyse had watched some of the preliminary testing.

Beautiful and deadly.

Harry had once claimed he got the idea from something he called the Whomping Willow. Another one of his crazy tales.

This line of glass trees was meant to stop and battle an army. The dragons could take care of an isolated grouping, but this line of trees and another one below the Great Wall Lake were meant to break an assault.

Today, though, the line of trees was the setting for a wedding. Alyse was well along with her first pregnancy and she finally agreed to an exchange of oaths.

There was a soft noise to signal the start of the ceremony and the various groups chatting with each other broke up and quieted.

Harry stood in front of the one true weirwood in the line of glass trees.

Alyse walked to him.

An ancient man Alyse had seen a few times stepped out from behind the line of trees and presided. Harry had called him Lord Rivers a few times before the ceremony.

She and Harry said the words and made their vows and shed some blood. She hadn't heard of that requirement before, but Harry still had secrets within secrets locked in his head.

"Congratulations Lord and Lady Whent," the ancient man proclaimed.

"I may be the Lady Whent, but you had better call me Alyse."

The tents went up at the edge of the line of glass trees. Harry was modest usually, but there were some things he liked to show off. That awful Groaning Tree, for one. These trees of glass and magic. Some of the inventions he and his students worked out.

Harry's students had the venue fitted with tables and chairs a few moments later. She had never advanced to that level with her spells, but she was an adept in warging and taught some of the students at Harrenhal now. Her and Gymma.

The celebrants and their guests ate at tables beyond Great Wall Lake. They told stories. Harry charmed some instruments to play while people danced, if they cared to. Then it came time for the end.

The speeches.

"It's no great surprise that Alyse and I have been together for a while. In the style of her culture, she stole me one night and never let me go," Lord Whent said to some chuckles. "I am glad for it. It just took me a long time to convince her to take my name.

"The only thing she wanted was for us to be oath-sworn beyond the former Wall. I suggested a venue with a view. These trees. It won't be long now until they get their first big test."

He was quiet a few moments.

The people sitting outside here all knew what was about to happen. Their wargs had told them. The dragons had been busy. The population of the winged creatures was about to shoot skyward. The more endangered dragons felt, the more eggs they laid and the harder they fought.

"But Alyse isn't just a woman of the North and a friend to Gymma. She's an inventor, too, and a woman far more organized than I am. She convinced me to simplify the refrigeration system we use at Harrenhal, let it be obviously magical, and install it in all our market towns. She led the team that created our self-propelled carts and our mechanical ravens even though she claims to be poor with spells. Don't listen to that. She was the one to ask the question: can a weirwood tree be made small enough to fit inside a home? The answer, of course, is yes. They turned out to be enchanting to look at and very health-giving for a sick family member.

"Her and her teams have found the plants needed for our first rounds of healing potions. She was the only one who didn't laugh when someone first asked the question, 'can we make a tree grow a boat without needing any fasteners at all?' We all know the answer to that. She pestered me until I improved on our water pedestals for clean, cold water - and worked out magical chamberpots that vanish their foul contents, and better tools for our farmers and our sheriff's men. We pray that we never have need for a standing army, that our sheriffs will handle those individuals who no longer appreciate what the Arbor offers them. Peace and stability and protection.

"Thank you. Finally, Alyse has led the way on the first wizard child to be expected at Harrenhal in known history. Thank you, Alyse, for sharing all of this with me - and with everyone else."

Alyse petted Gymma and just grinned. Of all the things Harry had helped her to do, that last might be her proudest accomplishment to date. She could just hope for a dozen more.

XX

Tyrion Lannister could go places no one else could. Who feared a dwarf?

Today, he is in a fairly dangerous place, namely in the same city as the rest of his 'close' family. Jaime was fine, no better than fine. He was a brother _and_ a friend. But Father and Cersei. If they could kill without consequence, Tyrion knew he'd be top of both their lists.

Though Cersei was partially defanged these days.

Father had stripped her of her title Queen Regent and saddled her with the title Dowager Queen. Has-been. Weak. She had raged about that for some time.

People still called Tyrion The Half-man, but now they also called Cersei, behind her back, The Half-wit.

Perhaps Jaime would have a training accident and become The Half-hand? No, probably better not.

Tyrion stood an unhappy man inside his room looking from the massive windows he had unbarred. He could see the construction that was happening in and around the Red Keep.

The noisy construction that started far too early in the morning.

New rooms were needed in the Red Keep since so many 'noble' families had been expelled from their lands. Most of them expected to be put up in King's Landing, but they objected to residing in the many levels of dungeon still available. They wanted light. They wanted new rooms.

The Tyrells hadn't asked for accomodations in the Red Keep - Lady Olenna had just bought out two of the nicest whorehouses in King's Landing and moved her family and retainers right in. They seemed to fit in well. Lady Olenna moved back and forth between Oldtown, where she had moved their family seat since the loss of Highgarden, and King's Landing.

Baelish had neither the Eyrie, his by marriage, or Harrenhal, his by royal appointment that exactly zero people recognized. He lived in the smallest of his whorehouses, the only one he still owned after the Tyrells had forced him out of the other two.

Everyone else, however... They clamored for rooms, for war, for grants of lands, for favor and privilege. Walder Frey's family seemed to multiply everytime Tyrion returned to King's Landing after some errand or other. Where were they all coming from? And how had he bred his lined with large, furless rats?

The number of lords hadn't seemed excessive when the Seven Kingdoms and Westeros were synonyms. Now that the Arbor had take the bulk of the land, things were a little cramped.

Whining was back in season. As was the Game of Thrones.

People eyed vulnerable territories like a Lannister coveted gold. Already three lords in the Stormlands and one in Dorne had 'died.' King Tommen had named replacements whispered to him by Cersei or Father. The ones in the Stormlands were accepted. The one for Dorne was not.

A pity that there was no army capable of subduing Dorne. It continued to run the way it wanted as did the Pirate Kings of the Iron Islands.

Which meant that King's Landing was bursting with indolent nobles. The Red Keep was now under expansion in order to house more of them.

Expansion meant workers and noise and terrible smells.

That meant Tyrion couldn't sleep.

That mean he could drink, if he could find the wine. Which he couldn't because there was a surplus of nobles and a dearth of good wine.

So he was up - and irritated - and looking at the world.

The workmen were uninteresting.

The new floors were equally uninteresting.

He looked out to the east.

The Dowager Queen was in the 'Godswood.' Tyrion could see her with her little group of ladies, also Myrcella who had come back from Dorne for some reason and never returned. Tyrion wondered if the poor girl would turn out a decent sort or a monster. Tyrion thought that since she had a monster for a mother she was likely to turn out well. But the Seven help the world if Myrcella ever had a daughter. These streaks of monstrosity seemed to skip generations.

Tyrion wondered if he should get dressed and wander down the stairs. He had fresh rumors. Apparently Olenna Tyrell had struck a bargain with Littlefinger and possibly others.

Tyrion decided no.

Tyrion had tried protecting his family time and again. They did not listen. They did not thank him. They did not appreciate him.

Cersei had her own spies. Doubtless she already knew.

Tyrion was staying out of the Game of Thrones for now. He had played Hand of the King to Joffrey and that had almost ended his life more than once.

He looked more at the distant 'Godswood.' There was little godly about it, especially when his sister was using it.

Cersei yelled at someone. Tyrion couldn't hear the words, but he saw the result. Some serving woman poured a glass of wine and ran it over to Cersei.

Tyrion needed wine. It was unfair that Cersei had some.

"Wine?"

No wine appeared. Nor a servant carrying wine. Wine had become quite hard to acquire these days. Much of the grape territory belonged to the Arbor. What didn't, like the production from the Redwyne's, went for astronomical sums.

"Wine."

The last wasn't a request so much as a lament.

"The days of wine and ease are gone."

Tyrion watched his sister sniff at her glass. She was particularly paranoid of poisons given what she was infamous for trying, and failing, to do.

Cersei handed the glass to one of her ladies-in-waiting. That one took a drink, dropped the glass, and then collapsed.

The Godswood, which didn't really wasn't all that godly just now, filled with goldcloaks. The Kingsguard assigned to Cersei looked on as the lady convulsed on the ground.

The servants who had manned the refreshment table were slaughtered by the gold cloaks. Tyrion would have at least asked them some questions. Cersei was probably just screaming contradictory instructions that succeeded only in baffling everybody.

Tyrion almost didn't notice when one of the gold cloaks pulled a dagger and lunged for Cersei.

Jaime - of course, Jaime - cut him down.

Cersei was lucky.

An assassination backed by a second assassination, they were not often foiled. That's the reason people paid for them.

The question to Tyrion was who? Who paid the gold dragons to make that happen? Who paid some, but not enough, to get quality?

He did like his sister sometimes. But he knew that she loathed him. The world would be a better place if one of them were out of it. He preferred to stay, of course, but he would never waste part of his paltry allowance on an assassin.

All Tyrion needed to do was compliment his sister and watch her choke to death on her bile.

He smiled.

He wondered how many assassination attempts his sister faced in a month. He had just seen evidence of two. Was the number higher than two? He suspected so, especially in the year since the "Peace" Conference in Old Town had gone so poorly.

She had wanted only the people and the lands back. Some agreed with her, but everyone wanted access to the food. Lord Whent had offered to sell them food. That would have helped, but Cersei had screwed it all up, as she usually did, which made her vulnerable now.

Cersei was almost picked up by Jaime and Ser Meryn as they ran her with her out of the godswood. That was a mistake, Tyrion saw. Three people did not easily fit the narrow corridors of the Red Keep. One of them jostled the scaffolding.

Ser Meryn.

Tyrion saw the bucket fall from the scaffolding. It struck Jaime on his head, spun around, and landed on Cersei's dainty little noggin.

Just like that, in less than a moment.

Tyrion was horrified at first.

Then he had to choke back a laugh.

Tyrion looked at Ser Meryn, who was still stunned at what he'd seen. Jaime was on the ground bleeding and the Dowager Queen had a bucket of mortar on her head which was oozing onto her silk dress.

Tyrion heard the men on the scaffolding scramble.

They would be blamed for any harm, of course. Because that was how justice worked in a place like this.

Several tools fell on Ser Meryn. He collapsed on the ground next to Jaime and the Queen of Mortar before he had a chance to help her.

Of all the ways the Stranger could take Cersei...

Tyrion walked away from his window and closed the shutters to the mess below. Being the first one to report unhappy news got one's name associated with that event. Jaime would be fine. Cersei would be gone. Perhaps that odious Ser Meryn would take some of the blame.

Better he than Tyrion. Tyrion was already loathed enough.

He would not take any blame for murdering his beautiful, cold, cruel sister. He might even be able to summon up some proper tears when someone _informed_ him of what had happened.

The story? Hmm, Tyrion would expect to be told of a third assassin's work, rather than an accident. Father would try to make her a martyr to some cause or other. Perhaps he might even resuscitate her reputation in death. Tyrion would remain the Half-Man, but Cersei might not longer be called the Half-Wit. Dowager Queen Cersei Baratheon, the Golden Dove. The Blessed. Something. Yes, Father might go that route.

Father was predictable.

"Where is the wine?" Tyrion asked.

No one answered.

XX

Daenerys watched three ships sail away from King's Landing as she approached it on land from the south. She stood at the head of her army, with three dragons at her side. She had landed in Oldtown some months ago and been welcomed inside after a minor resistance. She had handled those few who remained in Sunspear. She had slagged the gates of Storm's End. Now her and her army were to complete their conquest of the 'Seven' Kingdoms.

But...

The gates to King's Landing were open.

Had they not seen her force coming?

She did not let up her march, but she was concerned. She expected a battle, something more than just a token resistance as she'd found at Oldtown, but what she was seeing was... She didn't know. In all her marches on cities, none had left their gates open.

She came within a mile when a delegation under a flag of truce rode out to meet her.

"Your Grace, my name is Petyr Baelish. Until this morning, I served as Master of Law. I am, at present, the Steward of the Iron Throne."

"Steward? Where is the King? Where is the Hand?"

"King Tommen abdicated upon seeing the might of your force. His ships have taken him to Essos. Him and the Princess Myrcella, their uncle Ser Jaime, who was the former Hand of the King, plus their retainers."

Daenerys didn't succeed in keeping the shock off her face.

"We shall crown you Queen right now."

Her initial instinct was to refuse. She needed a moment. Things were moving a little fast.

"He was on one of those ships?" she asked.

"His party was. I tried to keep him from doing it."

"Why did he flee?"

"He didn't say."

Daenerys didn't believe that at all.

Jeor Mormont, one of her Queensguard, cleared his throat. She didn't have any other option. She had come to fight a war for this crown and this throne, even though they were now giving her both.

Something was off.

Still, she let them douse her in oils and put a gaudy strip of gold on her head. Then they led her into King's Landing. It smelled worse than Astapor had.

She sat on the Iron Throne and thought, for a moment, of her ancestors. How much blood they had spilled - and how little she had.

Then the riot started in the hall.

This person yelled about another person. What rooms they had in the Red Keep. What position they had on some list to be given the next open freehold.

Meereen hadn't even sounded like this.

Drogon roared when she looked at him.

That got the proper attention she was due.

"If you all speak, I can't hear you."

"My Queen. My Queen..." Over and over.

Drogon quieted them down again.

"Write your complaints on parchment and deliver them to...let's say Ser Jeor. Sorry, old friend, but you'll serve as my Hand for a time."

"I cannot defend you if I'm buried in papers," the former Lord Commander of the Night's Watch said.

"Right now, I worry more about the papers than about men with knives."

He was unhappy but nodded.

Missandei was still with Daenerys, but she needed someone more gruff looking to handle these pushy nobles.

It took only two days to understand the varied circumstances of why Tommen had abdicated. His court - and now hers - was filled with nobles who had lost access to their lands. They might disdain her, and they did, but they were eager enough for her dragons to assist them all.

She had, of course, noticed the wall when she was in Old Town. She'd noticed it again standing close to King's Landing.

That wall and the access it restricted to the lands on the other side were the reason she had an easy time becoming queen - and why it might just be impossible for her to retain her sanity.

She was Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. But that meant a slice of the Reach, all of Dorne and the Stormland, and a portion of the Crownlands. That was all.

Queen of nothing, she was, in truth.

She held her first organized court one week after her rushed anointing.

The first into the room were a delegation of Maesters.

"Your Grace, I am Grand Maester Leatins. I will serve, at your pleasure, as your advisor."

The man did not please her. But she could not pick her enemies. They selected themselves. This man was surely one of them.

"Tell me of the Seven Kingdoms, Grand Maester."

He had managed to come first in this line of beggars. He would present something that almost all the others agreed with.

"The problem is that wall you may have seen."

"I did."

"The problem is the...wizard who constructed it."

"I have heard a little of this wizard," Daenerys said.

Grand Maester Leatins proceeded to tell her more. He had once been Lord Whent's maester at Harrenhal until he'd been expelled for unspecified reasons.

"What is your advice?" the Queen asked.

The Grand Maester pointed at the next group in line. "The High Septon and I would be grateful if you bring the whole of the Seven Kingdoms under respectable teachings. Our people and our lands are trapped on the other side of that wall. A small group of magic users is holding everyone else hostage. The people, your subjects, wish to be reunited, your Grace, with the rest of the Kingdoms."

"A very impassioned plea, thank you."

"We would be most grateful for your reuniting our lands. For hundreds of years we have stood together. I will be glad to be of any service you might require in this undertaking."

Would he ever stop talking? "Thank you."

"The Lord of Harrenhal, as he called himself, was a bastard, legitimized by Robert the Usurper and then de-legitimized by the Usurper's Son, himself a bastard. His legal hold on Harrenhal has been stripped from him by this or that warrant. Still, no one has actually removed him from the castle."

The Queen had not heard that. "I did not expect to fight a war of paper or a war of words."

"Good. No one has stopped him from building his magical walls and shrinking the Kingdoms."

"I remember something about the castle. Harrenhal?"

"Yes, your Grace."

"I have three dragons. Three dragons once melted Harrenhal and roasted the tyrants who lived inside it. Three dragons would serve again, if it comes to that."

"Let us hope for reason over blood - but swift reunification above all."

Daenerys had heard plenty of subtle threats in her life. This was another, though the speaker was less subtle than he thought. This Grand Maester would have a seat at the table, perhaps, but his voice would not be one she listened to.

However, everyone in the hall heard this conversation.

As obvious as it was, reunion became the theme of the day. Daenerys was almost glad when some dispossessed lord went off script about his shoddy housing on a high floor of the Red Keep or his meager subsidy from the Crown.

She hadn't known that the Crown was supporting all of these people.

Later that evening, she asked Missandei, "Exactly how broke are we?"

The papers were not well organized. After Daenerys ate her dinner in the company of several self-appointed advisors, she shut herself up in her solar. Missandei returned. Her face had little life left on it.

"That bad?" Daenerys asked.

"Tywin Lannister claims that the Crown owes him five million gold dragons. The Iron Bank of Braavos claims an additional seven million."

The 'Seven' Kingdoms were so far beyond broke that she could never repair this damage. There was no time to wait.

The Arbor came first. Then perhaps reclaiming the Iron Islands. They had rebelled again and again. They were treasonous monsters, but low in wealth.

"Then we will have to handle this Uncrowned King, this Wizard. He controls three-quarters of the land of my Kingdoms - and half my people."

The planning started the next morning. On the day her army marched on the nearest segment of the wall, the first snow of this winter fell. Daenerys didn't feel the cold.

The plan was simple. It had been outlined by the very actions of this Wizard of Harrenhal. Undo the wall he put up, at least a section of it. Then march on the various castles, as he had, and dispossess those who used them.

Depending upon the snows, it could take months or even a year.

But it was better than sitting around the Red Keep listening to plotters, beggar-plotters.

The first requirement was a breach in this supposedly magical wall. Then she could get her soldiers across into what was called, oddly enough, the Arbor.

Her dragons and their Mother went first, as a warlike queen would do.

She selected a section that was on a hill. When her people came out through the wall, they would be on the high ground. She wanted them as best protected as she could manage.

"Drogon." She petted her largest dragon. She pointed to a segment of the wall. "Dracarys."

The fire intermittently bathed the walls for minutes, then she bid all three to try. Off and on, they worked on burning or weakening the wall for an hour. The stone did not melt or fracture or heave.

It was the first thing she had ever found that did not become fragile because of the heat. Her dragons could melt swords, but not this wall of stone.

"Good, you did good," she said to her dragons.

She wondered what to try next.

If it didn't succumb to fire...

Was the wall an illusion? She had experienced some powerful magical illusions before, totally convincing.

How would she -

"Mind the trees." That was a human voice that interrupted her.

The words were directed at her, but loud enough for her entire advance force to hear.

"The wall won't fall to flames, but the trees on this side might."

So she had made her presence felt already. How?

She had one guess. "Come out, wizard."

These people could cross great distances quickly, Maester Leatins and others had told her. The Citadel had done a great study of magic in the last few years.

Daenerys called off Drogon and he called off his siblings. They all waited for the wizard to show himself.

"You could send away your army," the voice said.

"Not with you in the area."

"I just wanted to talk."

"Show yourself and talk."

The wizard himself appeared on top of the hottest section of the wall. He did not seem to feel the heat. He looked down on Daenerys and he looked up at her dragons.

"They are beautiful."

" _They_ will burn down the wall and your trees, wizard."

He stopped considering Drogon and looked at Daenerys. "These trees keep your dragons in good health."

"Trees? No. My dragons eat meat."

"They might eat meat or fish, but they also need magic in the environment. Until recently, these trees were about the only things supplying it."

"They are magic. They do not need magic."

"I assure you they do. Have they been sluggish in King's Landing?"

Daenerys said nothing, but considered it. It was possible.

"The old dragon pits are lined with something, runes probably. Someone was given leave since King's Landing was built to further help erode the magic that a dragon would need to live."

"No."

"Your ancestors or someone they trusted ensured that the dragons would die, you know."

What? "They cared for their dragons."

"I've heard that it was inbreeding that caused the dragons to get smaller and more sickly. I don't believe it."

"What was it?"

"I'm told they kept the dragon skeletons somewhere in King's Landing."

"They did."

"Look at them. Their descent might have been inbreeding, but it was hastened by magical starvation."

She shook her head.

"You can see why I'm not interested in inviting you to visit the Arbor. It's taken quite some effort to get magic resettled in these lands. Once you destroy the runes that exist in King's Landing, we'll all be happier."

"My dragons will burn you out. They'll kill you for your insolence."

The man - no, the boy - did not react as one did when threatened with a dragon's fire.

"Aside from the threats, you seem like a nice person. Easily led around, but nice."

"I am... I am a Queen. I am not led around."

"They got you here to Westeros."

"I demanded an army - and they refused. So I finished my work in Yunkai and Meereen. I had to be considerably more brutal settling things than I would have liked. Then I sailed here and took over every place I wanted. I wasn't led here. This is my destiny."

"Oh?"

"Since I was born."

"I see," the wizard said. "I have no interest in harming any magical person or creature. Well, let me take that back. Priests or Priestesses of the Red God are not welcomed here. They have allowed themselves to become the avatars of a rather voracious fire demon, I've discovered after quite some work. I will not suffer them to live. All others are welcome. But, leave your steel weapons and your armor at home."

"You want the Iron Throne and all of its Kingdoms. I cannot leave you the greater part of my ancestor's..."

"I have no use for a throne," the boy said.

"No. Then let us in."

"No."

"You were concerned about these trees."

"Yes."

"Is that truly your source of strength? These old gods and their old trees?"

"These trees are one of my strengths. An important one."

"I'll burn them all down."

"No. You won't," the wizard said.

"Drogon."

But her dragons didn't look at their Mother. They were looking to the sky and reacting to a sound.

All at once, the three of them took to the sky - over the wall and away.

"Drogon..."

Her willful beast did not return.

That was the wizard's doing.

"Return them now."

"I cannot."

"What... What did you do?"

"Me? Nothing."

"They are trained to follow me."

The wizard nodded. "The dragons in the Arbor are left wild. Your dragons could hear them maybe - or smell them." He looked behind him. "Ah. One on patrol caught the interest of your three. Your dragons have never seen wild ones before, have they?"

That statement - which she had never heard before from anyone - thudded in her mind. Dragons in the Arbor... Wild dragons in Westeros.

"Impossible."

"No."

Where... She had received a cache of eggs. There could have been more caches. Maybe on Dragonstone before it was seized. Maybe kept by one Great House or another. This wizard had captured many, many castles.

"Only a Targaryen could bring a hardened egg to life," she said.

"I've long known the secret of hatching a dragon," the wizard said with a smile. "Other dragons have known the secrets forever."

"There were no other dragons."

None living.

"Funny, I managed to find quite a few," the wizard said.

How... Where? It didn't matter just this moment. The only thing that did were her three dragons that had flown off.

"Return my dragons to me."

"Perhaps they'll return. Perhaps not. They're now among their own kind. They need no mother now."

The bastard then disappeared off the wall.

It was a sad retreat to King's Landing. She had won nothing - and lost all. She began to consider her options. Without dragons... Without dragons...

She might just have to get into a ship and return to Meereen.

Many had tried to part her from her dragons, but this one had succeeded. All it took was...more dragons, wild dragons. Free dragons.

The next open session of her court was not going to be pleasant.

XX

Jon Snow was in Frozen Harbor on vacation. A bit crazy, going to the frozen north for vacation. The spot had once been marked on maps as Eastwatch-by-the-Bay. This is near where the Wall once stood. Now it was home to the Wall River, which attempted to drain the Great Wall Lake with little success. The elevations were wrong, he was told by those who knew.

Yes, Jon went to the Wall - for vacation. He had always liked the cold better than sitting on a beach near Lannisport - or sneaking across the wall to visit Dorne.

Give him someplace bracing, chilling, soul satisfying.

He had one decision coming up. He could go to a school at the Dreadfort and become a knight eventually. Or he could go and help Lord Bran Stark with his duties at Winterfell. Jon knew he would eventually end up at Winterfell. The question was the order of things: to be a knight first or to learn a set of duties specific to Winterfell.

He was leaning toward Winterfell.

The Dreadfort was no place someone not serious about knight training would ever go.

Jon saw people moving away from the stony beach. They were headed back into town and then down to the docks.

There was something happening at the anchorage in the harbor.

Jon wandered down to where the other people were gathering. "What's that?"

He, and many others, were pointing at a vessel in the distance. It didn't look anything like an Arbor boat.

An old man walking back from the dock stopped. "The crew say they're from Braavos. They say they used no metal to build her."

"Ugly thing."

"Ah, you're not a man of the sea. She's a beauty." The man shrugged. "They came to trade with us."

"This place isn't behind the wall. It shouldn't be hard for them to trade here."

"It's not behind the wall, but it's close to one, very close. A bad storm and the underwater wall would wreck a boat made with any metal. It's been known to happen."

Jon looked away. He hadn't known that.

He was curious about these traders. He went down and watched the unloading of goods.

The crew seemed glad to have made it. They were perhaps as leery of their oddly constructed ship as Jon was.

Jon walked back, thinking of an early supper, when he saw a half dozen mechanical ravens in the sky. One stopped in Frozen Harbor.

They had come from the North. Far north.

Jon bought some bread and ate while he rode north.

Four days later he found the encampment. The most senior wizards from Harrenhal, along with their students, were set up in a tent city. Dragons, on the other side of the line of glass trees, were spouting flames as they dived and tore at things moving in a great column.

It was terrifying.

Jon could imagine being in no other place. He left his horse well back and walked to the first grouping he saw.

His half-sister was among them.

"Jon?" Arya Stark greeted him.

"Hi Underfoot. How are the trees?"

"The Others don't like them. This is the first time they're massing like this and attacking in the day. We think it's the last, great effort."

Jon looked through the trees. What a force.

"What are you doing here?" Arya asked.

Jon didn't have a lick of magic in him. It wasn't a bad question.

"I had to see it."

Arya nodded to a bird on a stand near a tent. "I take my turn and watch it. I finally got comfortable working with a falcon."

"So you can feel what it is to fly?"

"I do often enough."

Jon didn't often feel jealousy. Certainly growing up a bastard in Winterfell had beaten any such tender emotion from him. Still... He felt it now.

He had sometimes done this with Ghost, but not in some time. Ghost had remained in the woods near Harrenhal playing with Bran Stark's Summer.

He wanted to see from a falcon. He wanted to use a spell. This wasn't his battle, but he wanted it to be.

He could hear movement and screaming in full volume.

The wizards moved and sometimes disppeared.

Arya tried to explain until it was her turn to overwatch again. He stayed and kept her unmoving body safe.

There were flashes of yellow and sometimes red. There were huge rushes of magic, some that looked like spears, others like walls, still others like waves as if from a sea of spells. All the while the glass trees were thrashing and cutting and waving.

Here and there Jon could see a bit of the battle. Ice versus glass, which one would win?

He had his answer many times when he caught a branch of a glass tree tear into something frozen but still fleshy. The icy blood didn't pool on the ground, it evaporated as it spurt from the creatures, bleeding and shrieking and screaming.

The wights and the Others kept coming as an endless column. They were trying to probe out weaknesses in the line of the trees. Which was the reason for the wargs and the spellcasters.

Hour after hour, well into the night, Jon saw things he had never seen before.

He saw the line of glass trees almost overwhelmed four times, in a different spot each time. The wizards scrambled to answer. Towers of flame and spells that severed limbs and others that ripped open the ground and swallowed everything within reach.

It was the near-dawn when the Others broke from combat. They must have realized they weren't going to win this night or any night in the near future.

Those that could, fled. Those that didn't, burned.

The force from Harrenhal didn't kill them all, but they got all the less-mobile wights and burned them. A small grouping of the Others retreated, all the worse for wear. Perhaps the dragons further north would have an easier time with a smaller, retreating force.

Jon never wanted to just observe a magical battle again. What use was his sword in a time of great magic?

Maybe this was his path?

Arya had enough magic.

Maybe he did, too. He wasn't that old, was he? Bran was at Harrenhal for now. Working at Winterfell or learning at the Dreadfort could wait. If he could. If he had the ability.

XX

Olenna Tyrell had herself carried to the Great Sept of Baelor. They were installing yet another King, one she approved of. None of the others had any gumption.

Still didn't, really. She kept track of things like that, in case one of them had a mind to come back.

Little Tommen was doing well in Lys. He had a vineyard or something. Figures that a Lannister boy through-and-through would become a wine maker or wine merchant. Better there than on the Iron Throne. He had been polite enough, but the dogs in the hall would have torn out his throat at some point.

Daenerys had returned to Meereen. Olenna kept her closest eye on the abdicated queen, Daenerys the Quitter. Daenerys the Dragonless. Over the years, she had made three trips to the far north where it was rumored her dragons visited her. But they did not obey her as hunting dogs obeyed the horn. She had trouble enough governing a city-state without the fear of her dragons.

There was that Targaryen imposter coached along by Jon Connington and Varys, who had a nasty habit of turning up like one of the rashes that the late Lord Luthor had. Imbecile. The supposed Aegon was now dead, but Olenna had never seen the body. She didn't know anyone who had. The whole thing had been strange.

Stannis Baratheon had been found in some holdfast in the far north, although he'd become quite a drunk like his brother Robert had been. Poor stock the lot of them. Stannis was killed before he could be crowned, although Olenna still hadn't discovered who did it. Stannis was certainly a righteous sort, though unpleasant. She did not miss his presence in the court.

Then the list was empty, unless they wanted to invite some minor house from Dorne to take the Iron Throne. Something like that. There were other possibilities, but each was as unlikely as the other.

The prime counselors of the realm set aside the fiction of Seven Kingdoms. She had sent Mace in public but conducted much of the negotiating in private. They all looked at the situation and agreed there was the Reach, the Crownlands, the Stormlands, and Dorne. Plus the Iron Islands, as if savages mattered.

Dorne and the sea pirates were out for producing the next King. One of her group's number had to become the next King - someone with real land and a real army.

They'd just invent some legal fiction to explain things. It happened all the time.

Neither Petyr Baelish nor Tywin Lannister concurred, but they lacked the clout and wealth to make their viewpoints stick at this time. Tywin had sold some of the debt owed him by the Crown and had been taken advantage of. He was cash poor in a significant way - and his personal interest in the Crown's debts were much reduced.

Olenna had helped with that swindle, not that she saw a profit from it. But weakening Tywin was a profit all its own.

Yes, Olenna heard everything about everything, especially about money and love. People couldn't not talk about the money they made (or lost) and the bed partner they'd bamboozled.

She liked to listen, smile, and plot. At her age, that was about the only pleasure remaining to her. Her days of sporting in bed were long over, though she had quite a few unsubtle offers from people looking to borrow her influence for a time.

The conference for a king had gone on for several days. They had gnawed over every set of genealogies they knew.

The victor? Olenna had held back her best possibility until the others were all exhausted with their futile jousting. Her candidate was her vassal Baelor Hightower, the current lord of Oldtown. Baelor had an ancient and excellent pedigree. His family had been the first ones to welcome the Targaryens and their dragons. So they should be the first ones to rule the "Seven" Kingdoms now that the Targaryens had all failed.

In a few minutes, Baelor Hightower would be King Baelor Hightower, the First of His Name. She liked that.

Others? Baelish and Lannister stood in a corner, a dark corner. Plotting still, perhaps. Pouting, assuredly.

She had people on the lookout for a plot. The last several Kings had all died shortly before or after their coronations. She was going to keep Baelor alive.

The minutes passed.

Then she was sure that Baelor was late. Though he was now the boss, which Olenna found satisfactory. Good head on his shoulders. She would have to mention lateness as a particular ill when next she spoke to him.

Lannister and Baelish were making noises that Olenna could almost hear.

It sounded less like plotting and more like a brewing fight.

Olenna zeroed in on Lannister when he shouted, "You murdered my daughter."

They were in the Sept of Baelor and that old gold cozener was shouting.

Hypocrite. Olenna had heard how Tywin once threatened to murder Cersei. Now he was accusing someone else of it. Olenna had paid for the poison, nothing more. The clumsy second attack - she had her guesses. But the bucket of mortar?

That had to be an accident.

Baelish took Lannister's words without comment. Olenna watched with some care now. Then, Baelish spoke quietly. Lannister bellowed something else. Some threat or other. This time Baelish did not respond with silence or with words. He pulled a dagger and plunged it into Lannister's neck.

A moment later a man seated three rows back ran to the scene. That man drew a sword - from where, Olenna wondered, this was a Sept - and separated Baelish's neck from his shoulder in three brutal hacks.

Ah, Tywin's last remaining retainer. A "sworn-shield" for a man who barely had the coppers for a bowl of brown.

Septons streamed in and the High Septon could only blink at the violence and the blood.

The avenger dropped his sword and let himself be removed from the Sept.

Olenna surveyed it all. The Stranger had paid his visit this day. She wondered if she should whisper a word and postpone the coronation?

No.

Let them cover it all with sand for now.

A little blood was good for a new King, she decided. Got the Warrior interested.

She took in Baelish and Lannister one last time before they were carried off. She looked at them with some satisfaction.

Olenna might spend hideous amounts of money, but she loved a bargain. She hadn't paid for either Baelish or Lannister to die, yet die they did.

"It's my nameday next month. I think my gift came early," she whispered to herself. She wouldn't expect anything better.

Then the High Septon led Baelor Hightower out and the ceremony began.

Even better, she thought.

XX

 **Many years later**

Rickard Stark, Greenseer Adept, was the sixth son of the late Bran Stark, Spell Adept. He had also won the election to be the Seventh Wizard of Harrenhal.

The Arbor of Harrenhal had stood for ninety years as of this day - and elderly Rickard would lead it until its one hundredth anniversary.

His living predecessors were milling around in front of the ugly tree where they performed this ceremony.

"I received a raven just before I apparated," Rickard said.

"News from the 'Seven' Kingdoms?" Donal Whent asked. He was old now, but he'd been a young man when he served as the fourth Wizard of Harrenhal.

Rickard nodded. "They put a new King on the throne, after they killed the last one. The 'Seven' Kingdoms are sure worth killing for."

"What is this one called?" Lord Whent asked. He was the first Wizard of Harrenhal and still Lord of the castle. He was ancient beyond words and wore a deep cowl.

"He was called Frandon Rivers, but now he's King Frandon the First. He's half Baelish from a bastard line and half Tyrell, all bad."

Lord Whent nodded. He was the one who had expelled all of them.

"You'll do well, Rickard," Donal said.

Rickard had been his student for many years. Two young men, one a prodigy taught by Lord Whent and the other a Stark who had had to work hard for what he got.

"Thank you."

"It's a peaceful time now."

"It will stay peaceful."

The students and Adepts of Harrenhal popped in over the next few minutes.

The ceremony itself was simple. In view of all living past Wizards of Harrenhal, and any students and Adepts of Harrenhal who wished to come, the new Wizard stood at the Groaning Tree and swore his oath, a binding one for his ten-year term. He was to seek out the magical and train them. He was to protect the Arbor. He was to keep the higher mysteries secret except when permitted by at least two of his predecessors as the Wizard of Harrenhal.

That last oath surprised him.

Higher mysteries?

The gathering near the Groaning Tree lasted a few hours, but Rickard was glad to leave. The ghastly tree unnerved him, as was the point, he supposed.

"Might I have some of your time?" a spry young voice asked.

Rickard turned. "Lord Whent. Of course."

The man wore that cowled robe everywhere. No one had seen his face in years, but he had to be over one hundred years old. He couldn't be long for this world.

This was still Lord Whent's castle even if the ancient wizard had long since turned over the management of the school of magic - and the de facto leadership of the Arbor. Whoever was the Wizard of Harrenhal was also the Lord of the Arbor.

Rickard and Lord Whent adjourned to Rickard's solar.

The old wizard removed the cowl - and he looked far younger than Rickard did. Impossible, not even magic could stop aging. Right?

There Lord Whent told a fascinating story he termed "the higher mysteries." He was from a different world, one that had magic but also had different technologies. He explained his awakening here and his inability to discover what or who had brought him here. He talked about his history, his goals, and his last remaining hope: to return to where he'd come from.

"If you wished to leave, why did you seek out a student?" Rickard asked.

"I don't think I sought out Alyse. It was chance, but not really. It was a little too convenient. The answer as best I can tell is that this world wanted its magic back. So I was brought here and given opportunities to make that happen."

"This world...wanted..."

"It's taken me decades to accept that. But, yes. Something I can't divine brought me here - and aided me as much as it could."

"What have you tried?" Rickard asked.

So Lord Whent explained. All the details, all the try, but the result? He kept waking up in his bed in Harrenhal.

"I planted more trees. I trained more magicals. I planted more magical species of plants. I transplanted as many dragons as I could find."

Rickard nodded. The Wizard of Harrenhal could not die, but he also couldn't do as he wished and return home.

They talked until the candle ran low enough to extinguish itself.

"We can continue this in the morning," Lord Whent said.

"I would be honored."

When Rickard went to collect Lord Whent the next day, so they could break their fast, the room was empty. And it would remain forever empty.

Lord Whent had gone.

Home?

To the Stranger?

Somewhere else?

Rickard didn't know.

One of Lord Whent's grandchildren became the new Lord Whent, but Rickard was still the Wizard of Harrenhal.

He heard the spreading legends, when facts twisted this way or that. The legends would eventually state that he would return in times of utter trouble for the Arbor - but, even if it was true, Rickard hoped Lord Whent, Harry Potter, was happy.

XX

 **Epilogue**

One morning, one hundred three years after Harry appeared near a stream draining into Gods Eye, Harry Potter woke up in his bed, in his home, on Earth. He had almost, but not quite, gotten used to the style of mattress they used at Harrenhal.

He was...grateful to be back. He would miss his other set of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but Gymma and Alyse and so many others had left long before Harry had.

He got up, felt spry enough, and checked his magic-hardened phone. He had been in Westeros for a hundred years. Here not even three weeks had past. Given his researches and his unpredictable schedule, Harry would venture no one would ask him where he'd disappeared to.

Three weeks for a hundred years... Sometimes magic still shocked him.

The one thing Harry did that day, aside from order out from his favorite restaurant, was transfigure a pile of rocks on his property to approximate a great weirwood tree, all clear dragon glass save for the red ornamental leaves. He left out the animation that allowed them to attack.

Harry found himself curious about his original world now that he had been on a different one. He had learned so much on Westeros. The last hundred years on Earth he hadn't done much new in the way of magic, but now he had a passion. He started an aggressive effort to better understand magic. He wanted to know what had whisked him from Earth.

He wanted to make sure it was a horrible fluke. He'd already played Messiah twice in his life. No sense tempting fate again.

In his next ninety years, he discovered much. However, what had drawn him to Westeros eluded him.

Harry went to sleep one night and woke up in another strange place, this time in a rather dirty, sandy alley between two short buildings. The magic felt different. Dry, desperate, welcoming. He was on a new quest.

His new task was also a magical place where the magic was restrained, dying, ruthless. It was in the scent of the parched air.

He heard foreign tongues, but decided some of the words were important. Arrakis, Harkonnen, melange, Shaddam IV. Harry had been summoned to another world - and been given no key to the puzzle.

He would unlock the problem - and he would return home from his third Messiah quest. He promised there would be no fourth.

XX

A/N: Yes, this is the end. Really. I mean it. Sorry it took me a while to get this last chapter out, but tying up loose ends is hard. I'm not even sure I got them all. (GRRM's world has a lot of loose ends.)

If Cersei's death seemed ridiculous or slapstick, I have done my job. Writing Cersei was fun. She thinks she's clever because she never gets called on her lame plots. That's more to do with her father's strength than her cunning.

As for Varys, he is still plotting something, somewhere. That man is a complete agent of chaos. Not terribly effective, but busy.

Yes, Harry wound up in Frank Herbert's Dune. I've always thought it could be fun to write a fanfic of that book. I haven't done more than an outline, though. Maybe some day.


	5. AU 1

Wizard of Harrenhal

AU #1

XX

A/N: I thought I was done. But I had some more thoughts so I figured I'd better write them down.

Harry Whent should have followed up his disastrous conversation with King Robert by appealing directly to Eddard Stark. Ned cared where Robert did not. This is that conversation and what follows. It would have made huge changes to chapters two, three, and four of my story as written. I'll let your imagination do that work.

XX

Alternate Universe #1: What If Harry Did a Little More

 **(Set After the Events of Chapter One)**

Eddard Stark had been in King's Landing for three days and he despised it. It was where his father and his brother had been murdered. It smelled like pigs shat everywhere. And the people...if they said one true thing in ten, Ned would eat his sword, Ice.

Governing Winterfell was simple compared to this. Ned trusted his sworn lords, well, most of them. Ned had a simple conception of justice. The law was the law. A broken law cost a neck or sent one to the Wall.

Here... Here nothing was sacred.

Lying was the capital's major sport.

He had threatened to resign four times already, yet hadn't.

He stopped his walk in front of his suite in the Tower of the Hand. "Thank you, Jory."

"My Lord."

He didn't really need a guard here, he thought. Still, for form's sake.

Eddard went inside. He had a little time before dinner with Sansa and Arya. There were papers on his desk. More and more and more.

Someone cleared his throat. "I told your friend, Robert, that he would set off a war if he asked you to do this."

Ned turned and tried to see who had gotten inside. "Who are you? Guards..."

The intruder waved his hand at the door. "They will not disturb us. My name is Hardiven Whent..."

Where had Ned heard that... "You're the Lord of Harrenhal."

Robert had stopped there on his way to Winterfell.

The stranger nodded.

"No one reported your arrival in King's Landing," Ned said.

"I made sure of that."

How? Varys and Littlefinger seemed to know what happened here before anyone else did.

But how wasn't what he wanted to know first. "Why are you here in my solar?" he asked.

"I'm going to tell you a fact, then I'll ask you a question."

Ned nodded. It was better than someone who spoke in riddles. Give him someone plain and direct.

"If you stay here poking around into Jon Arryn's death, you'll be dead soon."

How... All these secret sifters, spymasters... and not all of them lived in King's Landing. Even Harrenhal kept tabs on King's Landing.

Ned tucked away his fear and his spike of rage. "Is this a caution you offer? Or a threat?"

Whent seemed to weigh Ned's character with his deep stare. "I told Robert Baratheon not to drag you down to this place."

"He didn't listen."

"No. He did not. Can you tell me why you might just die? Who would want that, Lord Stark?"

Games within games, again.

"If I'm going to get us out of debt in a reasonable time frame, I will make many enemies."

"True. How else? Who else? Names, Lord Stark."

"Jon Arryn's death. You know what happened."

"I do. I know what you believe happened. I also know the truth of the matter."

The truth... Ned knew the truth, or so he thought. What did this Whent know? "So it wasn't the Lannisters."

"No."

Simple, clear, sure.

"But the letter from Lysa Arryn..."

Ned stopped there. Lysa had been the one to suggest murder. She had pointed the finger at the Lannisters. That meant - what? The first accuser always needed a very close look.

That first accusation came from Lysa. Could she kill her husband and then lie about it to her own sister. Ned didn't know - and he had no idea as to why she would. She wasn't that ambitious, Ned wouldn't have thought.

"Why? Why her?"

"She is one of your enemies, but not the biggest one. The man she loves is another problem. Robert is a problem. His wife, though, and her family..."

"The Lannisters didn't kill Jon, but - but what? They might have, is that what you're implying now?"

Lord Whent was as hard to get sense out of as the Spider.

"If he had gone further, if his investigations had. Yes. That was possible."

"What was he investigating?" Ned asked.

"He believed and proved that Robert has no natural, legitimate children."

No. Ned shook his head. "Joffrey, Tommen, the girl..."

"Bastards. That wife and her blond brother."

Bastards from incest. That would set the Seven against them - it would set everyone against them. Anyone who remembered the Mad King and the Targaryen sister-wives.

"But who is Robert's heir?" Ned asked. "Stannis?"

Lord Whent shrugged. "Lord Stark, which is more important to you? Legitimacy for the succession - or safety for your family?"

In this town in particular, Ned knew how serious a question that was. His father and brother had come here and not left alive.

"My family," Ned said.

"Then you must forget about who killed Jon Arryn. Lysa and her friend will surely get their just desserts. You must forget your memories of Lord Arryn and your fondness for the young man who fostered with you, Robert Baratheon. That young man is dead, slaughtered by this Fat King Robert."

"So I abandon the King?"

"Only his selfishness drug you here."

That was unfortunately true.

"I could march home in a month."

"No. You resign by letter, citing whatever reason you like. You board a boat without telling anything to anyone, especially your children. They are young and their lips are not cautious."

The difficulty of doing all that without someone noticing.

"But if we pack the things we brought..."

"Do you value your possessions over their lives?"

Abandon the dresses and the baubles...yes, he was getting caught up in the details. The girls could have new dresses.

"Seal the North. Let the war of succession roast the South, but seal the North."

Ned would do more than that. He was close with several lords of the Vale. He could send a few ravens, see some justice done by the Vale.

Or he could send the letter to Lysa's uncle, the Blackfish. He would handle her, Brynden Tully would. He had honor.

"If I do this, if I leave, what about Robert?"

"He'll rage. He'll call for your head - because he was never your friend in the way that you were his friend. Now he treats all people like tables. He loads them down with his worries. When they break, he throws them on the fire and calls for a new one."

Ned thought that unkind...

Maybe not. He was having to relearn Robert Baratheon. Ned admitted he did not like all that he saw. No, he actually liked little of what Robert had done.

Spies everywhere in Essos monitoring two Targaryen children while collecting a ransom in fees. Tournaments held almost quarterly with vast purses paid by the Crown. Interest crippling everything and making the Crown listen when a Lannister spoke.

There was no office, save for one or two, that the Lannisters couldn't buy. Tywin simply hadn't thought to purchase another stint as Hand for himself or one of his relatives. If the King died soon, a Lannister would sit on the Iron Throne, even if said Lannister used the Baratheon name.

He wished it were different. He wished Robert was better. If Robert would just stop throwing golden dragons into Blackwater Bay, if he used it better, Robert could clean up this cess of a city.

No, there would be no changing the man. There would be no miracle.

Ned had come here to avenge Jon and to help Robert. He no longer needed to be here to handle Lysa Arryn. He no longer wanted to be here to help Robert bury himself.

That decided it all. So simple, the decision, but it had agonized him for a long time, ever since Robert arrived in Winterfell and asked for Ned to come south.

"How much time do I have to tie things up?" Ned asked.

"Very little. Perhaps two weeks before you will be unable to leave at all. This place has a way of entangling everyone who comes here."

"Yes, I already know that."

"I might suggest you act like it," Lord Whent said. He got up and left Ned alone with his thoughts.

Damn Robert.

Damn Catelyn and Luwin for sending him on this fool's task.

Damn Eddard...for not turning around on the procession when he really knew who was in charge. The Queen of Bitter Smiles.

XX

The night fell on King's Landing. For two weeks, Ned had thought of nothing but escape. Now the tourney was done and Robert had left that day for a hunt of indeterminate length.

Everything Whent had said was true.

When Ned looked at Joffrey, he saw a young Jaime. Tommen took after his mother more. Myrcella might just be a straight copy of Cersei, in looks if not yet in temperament.

Ned had interrogated the servants on Jon's last days. He had found scraps of paper Lysa had left behind. He knew who her 'friend' was. Baelish, of course.

Ned was leaving tonight. Ned had gone so far as to drug his own children at their supper. Of his people, only Jory Cassel knew what he intended this night.

Now he had to inform the others - along with the spies. Every time he moved around, he announced where he was going and why.

Ned Stark was predictable. He would soon show everyone exactly how predictable. He almost smiled.

"Jory."

"My Lord?"

"Please have the men join us. I'm doing an evening inspection of the docks. I've been hearing of horrible happenings. Bring extra weapons and a cart."

"My Lord, I've heard things, too. It's not safe."

"If it isn't, then we need to fix it."

"Yes, my Lord."

Ned had developed his reputation as a stern figure who investigated everything. He'd been to Flea Bottom. He'd been to the Great Sept and talked with the staff there. He had walked different parts of the walls and inspected all the gates into King's Landing.

He now had a procession on its way to the docks. His children were already in the donkey cart he was taking with.

He spent twenty minutes inspecting things until he saw his watchers lose interest. They always followed, but they usually lost interest once they realized Ned wasn't using one thing as cover for another.

His watchers had become complacent.

Ned brought his group to a particular ship that had arrived two days earlier from White Harbor. Under the cover of darkness and complacency, Ned loaded aboard his family and his men. He had brought with him only two chests of belongings. All else he had left in the Tower of the Hand.

That, and a letter and the gaudy chain that belonged to the Hand.

He had had enough of this place.

Cersei could not be corralled, not when she'd perverted the succession. The throne would pass into the Lannister line. Robert paid attention to jousting and hunts in the forest. He paid no interest to the rest of the world.

Ned left him the work and the worry.

He stood on deck as they sailed and read the last of the raven-messages then. He had been so compulsive about work, he even brought with him this last batch.

He tore one message up and threw it into the water. It had been nothing that mattered to the former Hand of the King.

Then he cracked the seal of another. From his wife...

Ned wanted to shout. He wanted to rage. His lady-wife had kidnapped Tyrion Lannister.

Of all the... Of all the damned foolish things.

It was good he was gone now. Had Ned waited even a single more day, his departure would have been impossible. The Lannisters would have made sure of it - Ned and his children would have been hostages against the return of Tyrion.

House Tully...

Lysa was a murderer.

Catelyn was a beautiful woman, his lady-wife, but she was a fool.

Ned explained a few things to the master of the ship. Namely that they could not be boarded now that the Lannisters would soon be looking for any and every Stark.

He made plans. He could ride to the Neck, talk to Howland, get things sealed up. Ships could still land pretty much anywhere, but these Southron lords were fairly sensitive to the cold.

Let the South burn. Let the blond bastards sit on the Iron Throne. Ned would throw no more Northern blood away for a Stag who could care less.

XX


	6. AU 2

Wizard of Harrenhal

XXX

AU #2: Jon Arryn's Luck

 **This Scene Takes Place Before Robert's Journey to Harrenhal (and Winterfell) in Chapter 1**

A/N: This AU has nothing to do with AU #1; in fact, it would make AU #1 unlikely to happen at all. I've had this idea many times as I dip into the Game of Thrones world so I wanted to write it down. (Spoilers for the books/TV show.) What if Jon Arryn didn't die when his wife tried to poison him?

X-X

The knock at the door was expected. After all, who could come to this door and knock if they weren't expected?

Jon Arryn got up from his desk and opened the door himself. He felt his years, especially as the evening wore on, but he did the simple things himself.

He was still just a man, as exalted as his position was. He still opened doors when his guests knocked.

The man outside the door was the one Jon had expected.

"Come in, come in, Petyr."

Petyr Baelish nodded. "Good evening, Lord Arryn."

That voice.

Jon had forgotten how much it grated.

Jon didn't frown, but he had to prevent himself from doing so. It had been some time since he'd been alone with Petyr. Normally Jon met with the man when others were present. This meeting wasn't for others' ears, however. Especially not for Varys's - yet.

Jon felt... Jon felt that Petyr spent too much time around Varys, learning a spider's ways. Jon remembered when Petyr's voice hadn't been so low and mysterious. The man had learned to do that.

Jon stepped out of the way and let this mystery inside his solar.

Baelish came in and Jon closed the door. His guards outside resumed their places.

Baelish was smiling when Jon next looked at him.

A man who smiled all the time... you just couldn't be sure of such a man.

"How are you, Petyr?" Jon asked.

"I am well, Lord Arryn."

Lord Arryn was completely proper as he welcomed Baelish to the Tower of the Hand. He had helped to elevate the younger lord to his current position so he had to be completely proper. Baelish was one of Jon's men, in a real sense. He found he doubted the decision more and more.

Jon didn't know why, not exactly. Baelish said the right things. He was clever and bright and helpful. But, there was something wrong with him. That smile and those dead eyes and his well-studied voice, like he performed whenever the mummer beckoned.

It was a small niggling, not even on the first page of the massive list of things that concerned Jon.

Jon just watched Baelish. That was all he could do. The younger lord was just too good at juggling coins right now. Robert wanted what he wanted and didn't care how it was paid for. Jon found he was somewhat the same. The evening's topic might make coin juggling even more essential to the Kingdoms.

In the beginning of his time as Hand, Jon Arryn had looked with care over the accounts. Now...now, he let Baelish do as he needed. He didn't care to know the details, which were assuredly bloody and horrible. He'd let the details slip a little too much, though.

He had so little attention to spare. Jon Arryn knew that he had few years left to him, but he wanted to finish so many projects he'd started. Not least of which was settling the succession of House Baratheon. Those children of Robert's weren't...well, Jon couldn't quite figure out how to tell King Robert what he knew.

Jon knew and Robert's brother Stannis did, somewhat. Now the next part was telling Robert.

Perhaps Robert would believe Jon - then the Queen and her, and only her, children might be thrown from the highest tower in King's Landing. Or Robert wouldn't believe Jon - then Jon's years among the living would end.

He'd sketch out his plan on a later night.

He returned his mind to tonight's topic, a missive from the Iron Bank of Braavos that was a study in subtleties and insinuations. He needed all his wits to handle Baelish and this matter.

Baelish looked around Jon's solar. Jon pointed to a chair next to a small table. "A drink?" Jon asked.

Baelish nodded. "Please."

Jon walked to the table where the Iron Bank letter sat along with the gaudy decanter of Arbor Gold and several glasses.

One of the interior doors into the solar opened. Lysa came in. "Is that Petyr I heard?" she asked Jon.

How could she have heard Baelish's low voice, Jon wondered. "He's always prompt," Jon said.

Lysa turned and smiled when she saw Baelish.

Jon pushed the letter into a drawer for now. With Lysa in the room, they could chat lightly. The darkness could wait until she excused herself.

This was a common sight over the last few years. When Baelish turned up, Lysa inevitably would, if she were in King's Landing.

He wasn't jealous of the affection Lysa had for her friends. He loved his wife, but that love had been slow to arrive. What Jon had started had been a transaction between House Arryn and House Tully, Tully had supplied armed soldiers for a rebellion and Arryn had supplied a groom at a wedding.

Lysa always had been fond of her childhood friend, hadn't she?

Petyr had certainly done well from it. As a boy he'd been the heir of a small holding. His father's luck in war had given him the ability to foster with the Tully's at Riverrun, well... Had that not happened, Lysa might not have introduced Baelish to Jon. Sure, Baelish was a small lord of the Vale, but Jon had many, many small lords in the Vale. Lysa had helped to push Jon and Baelish together. Without that, Petyr Baelish might not now be Master of Coin. True enough...true enough.

Funny how little things didn't always stay little. Where one fostered turned out to have momentous import. Jon had helped to bring up Robert Baratheon and now he lived in this horrible Tower as reward or punishment - as it depended upon the day.

"Do you want a drink, Petyr?" Lysa asked.

"I was about to pour him one," Jon said.

"Well, you sit down with Petyr. I'll get drinks for all of us.," Lysa said.

Jon nodded and took his seat.

"Has our Robert had his supper?" Jon asked. He didn't understand his son very well. He was of a great age and Robert was so small, so young. He left the rearing to Lysa.

"He's being fussy, our Robin is. But Petyr doesn't want to hear about that."

"No hurry," Baelish said.

The words sent a chill down Jon's back. There was something so strange about Baelish, even desperate. Jon had met every kind of man during his life, but he didn't know if he'd ever met another like Baelish. He hoped to meet no others, for sure.

Lysa provided glasses for all three. She sat down and sipped and kept them amused for a good while.

Then Petyr stared at her for a moment.

Lysa flushed. "I should let you get to your work."

"It was a pleasure," Jon said.

Petyr stood while Lysa collected the glasses and left the room.

"A charming woman, your wife is."

If anyone knew women, it would be Baelish. He was the Master of Coin, but also the unofficial Master of Women for King's Landing.

Jon waved away the compliment. Lysa was Lysa.

"Why did you want to see me, Lord Arryn?" Baelish asked.

Jon got up and returned with the Iron Bank missive.

"This."

Baelish didn't read quickly. When he finished, he nodded once and looked up. "I see."

"Are the allegations true?" Jon asked.

"Well, if anything, they're understated."

Jon supressed a groan. "We owe more than they indicate?"

"If you include our debts to the Lannisters and the Tyrells, undoubtedly."

Jon leaned back in his chair. "We'll get no new extensions from Braavos it seems unless we get current. Perhaps not even after we manage that."

"Borrowing from foreigners is always a tricky business."

"Borrowing from Tywin Lannister is safer?" Jon asked.

"Well, no. Not really."

"Exactly."

They were up until the early hours figuring how to fill the holes in the Kingdoms' finances. Jon vetoed several of Baelish's suggestions, such as raiding this or that fund to get them past the hard times. The dole paid to the poorest of those in King's Landing was very informal, but it was real. That money couldn't be redirected, not without causing riots.

King's Landing had burned often enough in recent decades. Jon wasn't going to cause the next onset.

He thought of Baelish after the man left. The Master of Coin was good with tactics, but his strategy was quite poor.

XXX

Meeting with King Robert drew down what little patience Jon could muster on this particular day.

"Counting coppers," Jon said, parroting a line he'd heard more than once.

If Jon heard that term again, he might strangle King Robert himself. He left with the King's unstated, reluctant permission to do as he needed, so long as Robert didn't notice what was happening.

Jon could insulate the king easily enough.

Cheaper wine poured into expensive flagons they already owned, done. Robert could no longer tell the difference.

Closing down portions of Maegor's Holdfast that weren't used, done. It would save them heating them somewhat and having servants attend to them.

Selling off, quietly, some of the plate and artifacts that had survived the end of the Targaryen dynasty, done. Much had walked off during the Sack of King's Landing, much but not all. Perhaps they might smelt what was left of the plate into ingots first?

Robert would notice none of it.

Jon was so deep into his options that he didn't see that Varys was lurking in the Tower of the Hand. "Come from the King, have you?" Varys asked.

Startled, Jon stopped and looked around. Then he collected a response. "He was quite decisive today." A polite fiction.

Now Varys might say nothing or he might say something. Jon had worked near to the man for more than a decade and still couldn't discern his moods and whims.

"Undoubtedly. Have you heard that Petyr Baelish is sick?"

"Sick? With what?" Jon asked.

"A fever, Lord Hand."

"He was fine when last I saw him. Fever? I had a drink with him three nights ago."

Varys shrugged. "Pycelle does not know the cause of the fever."

"Pycelle knows many things, but medicine isn't one of them," Jon said. "Thank you."

"I always live to serve," Varys said. He moved away, slowly, silently.

Varys must be gloating. He and Baelish had quite the rivalry.

Still, there could be truth to what Varys had said. Jon went to where Pycelle was treating Baelish.

Jon Arryn could get no sense out of his Master of Coin.

He tried different questions.

"He was found like this," Pycelle said. "None of my treatments have changed his condition, I'm afraid."

Jon didn't want to tarry here any longer. Disease... "Let's speak away from this sick room."

Pycelle led Jon into his solar, which was rather gloomy and filled with books.

"Is this a fever? An epidemic of fever?" Jon asked.

As Hand, he had to be concerned about King's Landing - and there was little worse for the population here than a fever that spread from house to house.

Baelish had it. Where had he gotten it? Jon feared it came from the city. After all, who knew where Baelish got to in his wanderings around the city?

"This is the first report I've had," Pycelle said.

Jon nodded.

"But much of what happens outside doesn't make its presence known to us, not in a timely fashion."

A servant knocked on the door. Petyr Baelish had died. That fast!

What a horrible fever.

Jon went to look at the man one last time. Baelish's eyes had filled with blood. He looked like an unnatural creature in death with his red eyes.

What an unhealthy place King's Landing was.

Perhaps it was time to take a tour of the different Kingdoms and get out of this place. Jon could do with a few weeks in the Eyrie. He could even suffer through a few nights in Highgarden with that oaf, Mace Tyrell. Olenna had him painted right.

Jon scratched out a note for Lysa. She had best know about her friend's death.

XXX

That evening, Ser Boros of the Kingsguard passed Jon a message when he was in his solar.

Jon had tried to tell King Robert that he could do with other guards. He didn't need one or two of the Kingsguard to protect him.

"Thank you, Ser Boros," Jon said.

It wasn't a true gift, Jon knew, because nothing King Robert did was ever a generosity. King Robert shifted those who fell into his disfavor to Jon's service, then recalled them as others angered him. It wasn't easy to keep track of the feuds even when there were but seven in the Kingsguard.

Jon opened the message. He read it again because the first attempt made little sense.

The short of it was this: Jon's wife, Lysa, had collapsed.

Jon's first thought was fever.

Jon's second thought was for his son.

He rushed from his solar.

Young Robert was reading. Jon felt his forehead and Robert complained. His boy was fine, if whiny.

Then Jon stormed through the Holdfast to where Lysa was being treated by Pycelle.

"How is she?" Jon demanded.

Pycelle blinked many times. "It's not a fever."

"What happened to her?" Jon demanded.

Pycelle took his time answering. "I don't know."

"What are the symptoms?" Jon asked, trying to remain calm.

"She's muttering a great deal, but I haven't been able to learn anything substantive," Pycelle said.

Jon thought he was lying.

"Leave us."

Jon went into the next room where his wife lay. It was a small room a few doors down from where Baelish had died.

Lysa was weeping, inconsolable. She was also babbling streams of words, like an inconstant brook.

"What happened, Lysa?"

She looked at Jon. "Is it true? Is he dead?"

All this for a friend? Jon frowned. "Petyr? I'm afraid so."

She burst into a fresh round of tears.

"I shouldn't have sent you that note."

"You should have drunk the wine I served you," Lysa said, with sudden spite.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Jon pulled up a chair and sat beside Lysa. She cried and slept. She woke and cried more. It was some time into Jon's vigil when she did something different.

"I must have given him your glass, Jon..."

Jon said nothing.

He just thought back to the last time Baelish was in Jon's solar. Lysa had prepared the drinks.

"Why did he smile and drink it?" she asked and wept.

Jon had a horrible intuition about what she might say next. He still needed to know.

Jon adopted a low, soft voice, not dissimilar from Baelish's. "I don't blame you."

"You should."

"I don't," Jon-as-Baelish said.

"How did I get it wrong?" she asked herself. She cried some more, but seemed unaware there was anyone else in the room with her. "It was simple. You gave me the poison. It had no taste. Then you drank from the wrong cup..."

Jon discovered that his fingernails were digging into the palms of his hands. He hadn't drawn blood - yet. He untensed or tried to.

"You wanted to be there to see Jon drink it. I could have just poured Jon a glass, I do it several times a week, but you wanted to be there. You pushed and pushed." She hadn't yet run out of tears.

"We agreed it would be the next time Jon summoned you to his solar. Why, Petyr? Why did you drink the wrong glass?"

Jon didn't know how to answer her. He was still grasping that Lysa was a murderer and a bungler. She had planned, with Baelish, to kill.

Jon listened until Lysa fell asleep again.

He got up and exited the room.

Pycelle was waiting. No doubt listening, as well. "Is she well, my Lord?"

"She is quite mad, Grand Maester. Her childhood friend dying has left her quite insensate."

"I see."

Pycelle was trying to determine how this would benefit him. Baelish had been like that. Varys still was. Both of them were more gifted at not looking like opportunists.

"I will have her sent up to the pure air of the Eyrie to recover," Jon said.

"Yes, perhaps a recovery up in very pure air will be healthful."

"Thank you for your assistance," Jon Arryn said before leaving.

XXX

"Good bye, my love," Jon said. Then he nodded at his men and the procession to the Eyrie began. It had taken two days to organize and Lysa fought not at all because of the milk of the poppy Jon kept feeding her.

Robert Arryn remained in King's Landing and Lysa hadn't objected much.

Some of Jon's most loyal men would escort her to the Eyrie and keep whatever secrets they would learn. What would Lysa do when she realized what she'd revealed. Jon thought her the biggest, dumbest monster he'd ever met.

There was a secondary problem, of course. Jon had spent many minutes over the last two days looking at his son, Robert. Jon had found bastardy when he'd looked at King Robert's children. Should he find it in his own progeny? Was Robert Arryn actually Robert Baelish or Robert Stone?

Jon doubted everything about Lysa now.

He doubted himself for being blind. An old husband and a younger wife - and he'd never wondered about her friendships with people like Petyr Baelish.

He doubted all those around him who likely knew and had said nothing. Surely Varys had known, maybe others.

Jon, solemn, watched as the wheelhouse departed with his company of soldiers. He wouldn't see them again for some months. He intended never to see Lysa again.

He had work to do. He was Master of Coin as well as Hand for the time being.

That was the story he put about, which was true, but it gave him reason to dig deeply into Petyr Baelish's dealings. That man deserved to be thrown to carrion eaters, but Jon would see about a small, respectful burial.

He rode to Baelish's primary baudhouse and nodded to the guards he'd ordered to keep the place secure.

"Anyone find the papers we need?" Jon asked.

"Lord Hand, his solar seemed choked with parchment," the guard said.

"You expelled all the...patrons and workers of this place."

"An unhappy lot they were, but yes, Lord Hand."

Jon nodded and went inside the garish structure. It still smelled of perfumes. Baelish was dead and still his scents lingered.

Jon found the solar and began assessing the paperwork. He had his squire sent for, along with more of the servants from the Tower of the Hand. There was a vast amount of writing to be examined.

Jon started putting the papers into stacks, some private, many matters of the Crown. The far stack, and the smallest, dealt with his procuring business. Others dealt with matters of the Kingdoms or other business Baelish was doing. He was far wealthier than Jon had known.

He paused and flipped through the parchments that outlined Baelish's holdings. He would confiscate every golden dragon. Most, if not all, had come from the Treasury. It should return there, as soon as Jon found the evidence of how Baelish enriched himself so rapidly.

He paused to eat. He paused to give orders. He ordered candles lit when dusk fell. He was deep into the papers, worryingly so.

The situation was far worse than Jon had imagined. Now Jon saw why he'd received that letter from the Iron Bank.

As far as Jon could tell, Baelish had stopped paying the debts owed to the Iron Bank some time ago. Why? That was unclear, but Baelish had had some scheme in mind. Jon hadn't found anything written concerning his full intentions.

The third day he was there, in the afternoon, Jon found the first secret room. He'd been walking the former baudhouse and discovered some oddities. The rooms weren't the right sizes, which meant to Jon that there were more spaces than what he could perceive.

He didn't ask for assistance from his squire or his men. He spent a good deal of time finding the well-obscured entry. The secret space was larger than Jon's marital bed. It was filled with shelves and the shelves were stacked with gold.

The next day Jon found a room filled with precious stones, a larger collection than still resided in the King's Treasury.

An hour later and Jon was looking for more secrets. He found the most unsettling of all. It was a room of stoppered bottles, a room full of labeled and unlabeled poisons.

Baelish hadn't just been a thief and a sometime conspirator. He had facilitated who knew how many murders.

Jon was tired of being in this miserable setting.

"Hugh," Jon called.

"Lord Arryn?"

"We'll need covered carts and several of them. We'll need more men."

"How many carts, my Lord?"

"Let's start with six."

"Six?"

"Order up six in my name."

Before the first cart arrived, the news was about in the vicinity, from Hugh to the guards to the locals. Of course, the locals had been curious enough about the activity in the space. Soldiers kicking the patrons of a whorehouse out was good gossip. Carts were something else.

Cart after cart was needed for the Master of Coin's old whorehouse. The general verdict of the dead man: he'd been a thief of the realm - and a traitor.

Jon was not unhappy when that story spread and got worse.

Six carts wasn't even the beginning to enough.

Jon had needed five just for the records.

He left the gold, jewels, and poison in the baudhouse for the moment. He kept guards at the door, too.

XX

Jon watched the flotilla sail away to Braavos. There were three treasure ships surrounded by two dozen men of war.

The treasure, much of it reclaimed from Baelish's various properties in King's Landing, would make it safely to the Iron Bank. This might not be enough to settle things between the Crown and Braavos, but it had to help.

There would be a caravan leaving tomorrow for Casterly Rock and a smaller one leaving in a week for Highgarden.

King Robert was repaying his debts - or Jon was doing so on his behalf.

All would be right again in the Seven Kingdoms, right?

No. Jon was not happy. He was actually furious about the things he'd discovered. First, about the gold. Where did it come from?

It had long been available, though Jon didn't know it. He'd puzzled over the documents for a long time. He realized the answer was this: When Jon became Hand, the Seven Kingdoms were in dire trouble recovering from battles and deaths and ruined farms and villages.

Jon hadn't noticed, but things improved. Ruined farms rebuilt. The economy strengthened during the spring and summer weather - and the long peace.

Petyr Baelish noticed. He came into his role as Master of Coins and reported the same dreary news that Jon and King Robert had expected.

Baelish let the debts pile up and repaid them slowly, if at all.

All the extra gold went into buying things or perhaps into some stockpile he controlled - or to the people he paid to help him. Many people had had their necks shortened in the last few weeks, Baelish's helpers.

Now the Treasury was fuller than it had been in decades, even with these payments outbound.

The Seven Kingdoms weren't poor by any means, even with Robert spending as much as he could think to. Jon hadn't canceled out the debts held by Braavos or the Lannisters, but he'd slashed them heavily.

Jon was furious at what he hadn't seen.

He was furious that Robert's messes had kept him so busy that he just didn't know.

The Kingdoms were in good shape, if not for thieves like Baelish or monsters like King Robert. And wights like Jon Arryn thinking they were doing something necessary and useful.

Jon walked back through Maegor's Holdfast to his tower. He had blocked off part of the morning and spent it with his son - or Lysa's son, at the least.

He was trying to make up his mind about a few things.

First, was little Robert his actual son? Or would the House of Arryn devolve to his cousin?

He spoke with the boy, who was still whiny and a bit deluded. He tried to talk with the strange child over lunch. It did not go well. Jon finally dismissed the child - not _his_ child, rather _the_ child - and turned back to the larger problem.

He set off on horse with a few guards. He went back to the closed baudhouse that Baelish had used as his base of operations. He sent others to the other properties Baelish owned.

Jon gave the men with him varied instructions. They were to take away the furniture, the beds, the carpets, and the tapestries, everything. Jon's men were to haul all of it out to the carts which would be coming. The rumor was that this place would be sold or demolished.

Within that busyness he'd created, Jon returned to that hidden room filled with stoppered vials, Baelish's poison store.

The shelves were jumbled with different concoctions, but nowhere near to full.

Poison was a woman's tool for killing, stockpiled by a man who had many, many women to do things for him. Lysa Arryn, no, Lysa Tully, who was eager to act, but thankfully incompetent in her actions.

Almost dying at the hand of his wife had clarified things for Jon Arryn.

He hadn't been himself in a long time. He'd just walked around like some wight out of a nurse's fable for a small child, a wight ordered about by an ogre with a crown. Jon hadn't thought, he hadn't felt, he'd just done.

Now Jon looked and thought.

He didn't like what he saw. He'd let Baelish do all that he had. He'd let King Robert do all that he had, too. This room of poison was a metaphor for many things, this was the true heart of the Seven Kingdoms, this room of poison.

Jon knew that the smallfolk had recovered from the rebellion, but everything else was in worse shape now than when the Mad King was on the throne. Of course, Robert wasn't burning anyone, but the safety of the realm was doubtful. He didn't care what he did. He didn't care to notice his children weren't even his children. Whatever he looked at, he broke.

 _Buy me an army, Jon._ So he and Ned Stark had done their duties and paid what Hoster Tully had demanded.

 _Run my kingdoms for me, Jon._

 _Don't bother me with details, Jon._

Jon could fix much. He saw clearly now. He had all of these resources. What would he do with them?

He hadn't realized just how much Lysa's attempt on his life had affected him. Jon Arryn was imagining the most horrible things in this moment.

He couldn't wait. He couldn't continue to dither.

Jon decided.

He checked the official schedule and selected a likely candidate, then went to the wine cellars himself. The cellarers were quite shocked at his appearance. In the history of King's Landing, no Lord Hand had probably ever set foot in the wine cellars.

"We're having a feast soon in honor of the anniversary of the King's accession to the throne. I wonder which are the rarest casks we have on hand?" Jon asked.

It was the right question to ask. Cellarers loved to talk about their cellars.

Jon marked out several for the feast, but the most special one was something rare from Volantis. He sampled it and declared he'd never tasted its equal. "This will be the centerpiece of the feast."

"Yes, Lord Hand."

"Have it sent to my solar. I'll keep an eye on it so it survives until the feast. I don't know how you managed to keep it from disappearing down someone's throat."

The cellarer, who looked as stooped as Jon felt, smiled an almost toothless smile. "I rediscovered it in a dusty corner three days ago. I had to go back to the registers to figure out what it was. It was the last cask of one hundred forty acquired some decades ago. No one's even wiped away the dust in decades."

Jon nodded, pleased. He had a surprise that no one at the feast would be able to pass up. No one thinks Volantis and good wine, but this elixir was. It would be a particular surprise and treat for the feast.

XX

The feast began eleven nights later. The feasting hall was bright, smoky, and hot. The food came in wave after wave of enormous portions. There was much laughter and many jokes that involved little fingers somewhere along the way.

One hour in, Jon stood and waved at a particular servant of his. A cart with a wine cask upon it was rolled into the room.

Jon looked to his old foster-son, Robert Baratheon, and explained the history of the cask, its origins and its age and its delicious properties.

He walked to it with a small glass and took the first drink. "Delicious," he proclaimed. He looked back at King Robert. "Today we drink for you, Your Grace, and the peace you have brought the realm."

The room thrummed with happiness. Robert roared back something. The servants in the room descended on the cask and made a particular show of filling the little glasses, which were quite expensive to make, and carrying them out to the guests, in order of precedence.

The King and Queen were first, then various of the lords, then the Sers, then everyone else.

The first unexpected issue came then.

Joffrey Baratheon, seated below the head table, demanded a glass. "Father? Father, I want to try the Volantis wine."

Robert looked down and waved his hand. A drunkard wasn't concerned about making more drunkards.

Little Robert came up to Jon. "May I try it? Myrcella and Tommen also got glasses."

He was whining, of course.

Jon looked to the table where Robert had come from. Yes, that open seat was next to Myrcella Baratheon. Neither Robert nor Myrcella wore their true bastard's names.

"Fine. Let me get you a glass," Jon said to the boy

Jon poured it himself. Little Robert grinned before he gulped it then sputtered from the shock.

"Back to your seat," Jon said.

Jon limited himself to the one glass, it was enough. He noted that King Robert had a dozen of the small glasses. Queen Cersei had almost as many.

Twelve was just gluttony, but a glutton would do as he or she wanted.

He saw some of the Kingsguard sneaking sips. Jon looked especially at the other members of the Small Council. Pycelle and Varys both indulged, as was the expectation, though Varys had had to be bullied into attending the feast. He seemed not to enjoy such large gatherings.

Jon felt the poison's effect two days after the feast. He began to pour the darker or smellier poisons down the drains and dispose of the vials. He had no more use of Baelish's poison store.

By the third day he was nearly insensate. He would see the Stranger soon and pay for what he'd done in life - and not done soon enough.

For, when that cask of Volantis wine rested in Jon's solar, he used those poisons collected by Baelish. He drank a few glasses of the pure wine to make additional room in the cask - then more than replaced what he'd taken with the clear poisons that possessed no obvious smell. Jon was no master of poisons, but he thought he'd done enough.

The Kingdom would be a better place with King Robert gone - and Jon gone. Let whomever survived pick up the pieces.

Maybe someone would start a campaign to clean up King's Landing after a bunch of nobles and royals died from a fever. Someone else would be Hand.

Maybe he would do a better job at seeing what was clearly happening. Jon had been blind for so very long.

XX

Jon woke in a bed.

He was alive and surprised at that unpleasant fact.

Stannis Baratheon rose from a chair near Jon's bed. "I'm so glad that the fever didn't take you."

So the story was fever, not poison.

"Stannis, how are you?" Jon croaked. His voice was disused for some time.

Stannis hadn't been in King's Landing during the feast, Jon remembered.

"I'm alive, one of the few, it seems. My older brother and his family are dead. Varys and Pycelle and my little brother Renly, plus several minor lords, are gone. Three of the Kingsguard, too."

Jon closed his eyes. Those are the ones Jon expected to get.

"Your son, Jon."

Jon swallowed and nodded. He knew allowing the boy a glass was a death sentence. He'd done it anyway.

"The servants and cooks are cut by a third."

How? They hadn't been invited to the feast...but Jon had delivered the special cask into the kitchen's care two hours before the festivities began. Some, no doubt, had risked little nips.

"Thousands inside the city walls also."

At that, Jon's eyes popped open. How? Thousands... Was there a real fever ravaging in this place?

No...

No, Jon was to blame for those deaths, too. All the poison he dropped down the drains went somewhere. Maybe the residential water supplies were contaminated by what went down the castle's drain.

Jon turned his head toward Stannis. "So I should have called you King Stannis?" Jon asked.

Stannis frowned but nodded. "I am now King, though my coronation is some time off. There is one other thing you must know."

Jon wondered if Stannis knew that this fever wasn't a fever.

Better to hear it all.

Jon had expected to die because of what he'd done. Landing in the Black Cells didn't terrify Jon. He had attempted to heal the Kingdoms. That was worth paying a great fee.

"We had word from the Eyrie. There was an accident," King Stannis said, slowly.

"What happened?" Jon asked.

"Your wife was doing poorly. Perhaps drink, perhaps illness. The details were not clear from the letter."

"What happened to Lysa?"

"The letter says she fell out of the Moon Door."

Lysa was dead. Lysa's son was dead. Jon did his level best not to show his relief. The House of Arryn was unstained by her - and House Tully.

"I loved her, you know," Jon said, which was true for a long period of his life, though not recently.

"I know," Stannis said.

"I'll have to arrange for a funeral."

"I sent a letter on your behalf when you were ill."

Jon nodded. "Thank you, Your Grace."

"I never expected to become King, not even when Robert was new to the throne. Especially not after Cersei bore him a son. I've not prepared for this."

Robert hadn't either. He just had the job, though he did it more poorly than Jon could have believed.

"I must ask something of you," Stannis said.

"Anything."

"Will you serve as Hand for me..."

"Your Grace, I'm an old man and this fever may not be one I recover from."

"If you'd let me finish..."

Jon nodded.

"If you survive another week or another decade, I'll receive your advice better than my brother ever did. You have run the Kingdoms his entire reign. Do this for me and begin training up your successor, if you wish."

The Stranger had decided to spare Jon for now. Jon really had no choice. "I will serve, Your Grace, so long as you want me and my body permits me."

Stannis gave a flinty smile and retook his seat. "What do we do first?"

He wasn't one for dallying.

Jon was quiet a moment. He'd expected death and had gotten a form of rebirth instead. This he hadn't prepared for. Still, there were items on his list that were now within reach. "This fever has come from the disgusting condition of King's Landing."

"Yes."

"It's not the first and, if we do nothing, it won't be the last. This time it took the royal family and so many others."

"So how do we start?" Stannis asked.

"We start by honoring the dead and cleaning the filth," Jon said.

King Stannis nodded, considering. "Yes. This is what we must do."

Of course, the two understood different things by Jon's statement. Jon would construct plans for both types of cleansing, the physical and the moral. He'd bury those he'd murdered and put in sewers - but he'd put more people on the list and continue to pluck out the corrupt.

Stannis had suggestions but the plan they began that evening was mainly Jon Arryn's.

This is what Jon's luck had given him, the wrong glass to drink and the wrong man dead by Lysa Arryn's poison. Jon would push forward for as long as his luck would hold. One man, with the right position and ideas, could clean out the muck of King's Landing - or die trying.

XX


End file.
